lite 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DODDsmasflb % 



5 0*. 




••-«•' > 













"^^d* t/^ 





1*"' ^ 








"^^o< 









'bv" 




/\ 







■. "^^0^ «', 















V ►', 

















•^6 






The 

Connecticut River 

and the 

Valley of the Connecticut 

Three Hundred and Fifty Miles from 
Mountain to Sea 

Historical and Descriptive 
By 

Edwin M. Bacon 

Author of ** Walks and Rides in the Country round about Boston," *' Historic 

Pilgrimages in New England," "Literary Pilgrimages 

in New England," etc. 



Illustrated 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Ube Iknicfterbocfter press 

1906 



^ 



\1' 



C'\ 



(>- 



J 



LIBHARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCooies Received 

AUG 3 1906 

CoDyriffhl Entry 
CLASS yt* XXc. No. 
COPY B. ' 



Copyright, igo6 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ibe ftnfcIicibocRcr prcflB, t»cw Uorft 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO 

Lindsay Swift 

OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, MASTER OF AMERICANA, 

WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY RARE FORTUNE TO KNOW 

AS HISTORICAL GUIDE AND AS FRIEND. 



Prefatory Note 



THE story of the Connecticut River and the Valley of 
the Connecticut is so mingled with the history of the 
country, and particularly of the formative periods, that in 
the proper telling of it much of history must also be related. 
Accordingly in the following pages there will be found 
blended with descriptions of the longest river in New Eng- 
land and one of the fairest valleys in the country, narra- 
tions of Indian and colonial wars ; of the establishment or 
evolution of democratic government ; of the pioneer devel- 
opment of internal improvements and of industries ; of the 
planting and upbuilding of many and varied institutions of 
learning, colleges, academies, and schools, for higher edu- 
cation — more than on any other river in the world — 
and withal of the growth and unfolding of the genuine 
American character. In the study of my subject, besides 
consulting the various histories, colonial, state, county, and 
town, bearing upon it, historical monographs, family papers, 
diaries, and contemporary narrative, I have gone, so far 
as they were accessible, to original authorities. As a re- 
sult of this research new readings of popular history have 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

IV. A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 38 

The Political Motive that Inspired the Dispersion from the Bay Colony 
to the Valley — Democracy versus Theocracy — Thomas Hooker and 
John Cotton, Spokesman for the Differing Parties — The Hookerites' 
Petition in tlie Bay General Court — Winthrop's Report of the Un- 
recorded Proceedings — Alleged and Real Reasons for Removal — 
Provisional Government for the Valley Plantations — The Independ- 
ent Establishment — Hooker's epoch-making Sermon — The first 
Written Constitution — " True Birth of American Democracy" — 
Hooker's Illuminating Letter : a Colonial Classic. 

V. The Fall of the House of Hope .... 56 

Troubled Life of the Dutch among their English Neighbors — Petty 
Aggressions on Both Sides — De Vries's Observations in 1639 — 
His Dinner-table Talk with Governor Hay nes — A Pleasant Episode 
of his Visit — Commander Provoost's Strenuous Five yeare — A 
Dramatic Scene at the Fort — Diplomatic Gysbert opDyck — Peter 
Stuyvesant at Hartford — The Hartford Treaty of 1650 — A brief > 

"Happy Peace" — Captain John Underbill upon the Scene — He 
seizes the House of Hope — End of Dutch Occupation. 

VI. Satbrook Fort ........ 67 

The Saybrook Plantation for Important Colonists who never came 

— The Questioned Story of the Embarkation of Cromwell and 
Hampden — Beginnings by George Fenwick — Lion Gardiner's grim 
Humor — John Winthrop the Younger: A Remarkable Personage 

— Fenwick's Home on Saybrook Point — Lady Fenwick — John 
Higginson, the Chaplain — Lady Fenwick's lonely Tomb — The sec- 
ond Saybrook Fort, Scene of an Adventure of Andros in 1675 — 
Beginnings of Yale College at Saybrook — The " Saybrook Plat- 
form" — First Book Printed in Connecticut. 

Vn. Early Perils of Colonial Life .... 80 

The Kiver Settlements of the Colonial Period — Confined to the Lower 
Valley for a Century — The First Settlers completely environed by 
Savages — The Various Tribes and their Seats — The Dominating 
Pequots — Covert Attacks upon the Settlers — Massacre of Captains 
Stone and Norton with their Ship's Crew — The Killing of John Old- 
ham off Block Island — Avenged by Captain John Gallop ^ — The 
" Earliest Sea-Fight of the Nation " — A Graphic Colonial Sea-Story. 

VIII. The Pequot Wars 91 

First Expedition from the Bay Colony under Endicott — Lion Gardi- 
ner's Practical Advice — Plot to Destroy the River Settlements 



Contents ix 

PAGE 

— Tragedies on the River — The Connecticut Colony's Campaign — 
The "Army" drawn from the Three River Tovpns — Major John 
Mason, the Myles Standish of the Colony — Hooker's Godspeed at 
the Embarkation — Scene on the down-river Voyage — Debate of the 
Captains at Say brook Fort — Mason's Master-Stroke — The March 
in the Enemy's Country — Burning of Mystic Fort — End of the 
Pequots. 

IX. Philip's Wae in the Valley 113 

The Direful Conflict of 1675-1676 Centering in the Massachusetts 
Reach — Philip of the Wampauoags — The frontier River Towns — 
Hadley the Military Headquarters — Gathering of the Colonial 
forces — The "Regicide" Goffe perhaps a Secret Observer of the 
Spectacle — The apocryphal Tale of the " Angel of Deliverance " — 
First Assault upon Deerfield — Northfield Destroyed — Fatal March 
of Captain Beers toward Northfield — The Ambuscade on "Beers's 
Plain" — Ghastly Sight meeting the Gaze of a Relief Force — A 
Sunday Attack upon Deerfield. 

X. The Battle of Bloody Beook 126 

Slaughter of the " Flower of Essex " at South Deerfield while Convoy- 
ing a Provision Train — The Sudden Attack from Ambtish by 
a Swarm of Braves — Many of Captain Lothrop's Men idly gath- 
ering Grapes by the Brookside when the Warwhoop rang out — 
Desperate After-fight by Captain Moseley — Memorials of the Battle 

— The Legend of "King Philip's Chair" — Destruction of Deer- 
field. 

XI. The Buening of Speingfield 132 

With Pledges of Fidelity the Agawam Indians concoct a " Horrible 
Plot " — Bands of Philip's Warriors secretly admitted to the Indian 
Fort on the Outskirts of the Town — A Night Alarm — Early Morn- 
ing Attack upon Messengers riding out to Reconnoitre — The full 
Pack soon upon the Village — The People crowding the Garrison 
House — A wild Scene of Havocrwith the Town in Flames — Major 
Pynchon's Forced March from Hadley to its Relief — Grave After- 
events. 

XII. The Rising of the Naeeagansetts . 142 

Canonchet drawn into Philip's War — Flight of his Tribe toward the 
Valley — Ravages of Frontier Towns on the Way — The great 
Indian Rendezvous about Northfield — Attacks upon Northampton, 
Hatfield, and Longmeadow — Death of Canonchet : A Hero of his 
Race — The Great Falls Fight : An English Victory followed by a 
Disastrous Rout — A Chaplain's Experience — Final Attacks upon 
Hatfield and Hadley — End of Philip's War— Death of Philip, 
deserted and betrayed — Results of the War to the Colonists. 



xii Contents 



II. ROMANCES OF NAVIGATION 

PAGE 

XXI. An Early Coi.oxiai, IIighttat .... 303 
The River an important Thoroughfare through Colony Times — The 

first White Man's Craft on its Waters — Dutch and English Trad- 
ing Ships — William Pynchon the first River Merchant — Pros- 
perous Traffic in Furs, Skins, and Hemp — The earliest Flatboats 
operating between the Falls — Seventeenth Century Shipbuilding 

— River-built Ships sent out on long Foreign Voyages — The Rig 
of the Flatboat as developed by Colonial Builders — System of 
XJp-River Transportation in the latter Colonial Period — Lumber 
Rafts — Early Ferries. 

XXII. Locks axd Canals 310 

The first River in the Country to be Improved by Canals — The Initial 

Charter issued by Vermont in 1791 — First Work in the Massachu- 
setts Reach — Locking of South Hadley Falls in 1795 — A Remark- 
able Achievement for that Day — Unique Features of the Construc- 
tion — The System as Developed Northward — Wells River Village 
Head of Navigation — River Life then Animated and Bustling — 
Improved Types of Freight-Boats — -Schemes for Extending the 
System with great Rival Projects — Final crushing Competition 
of the Railroads. 

XXIII. Steamboats and Steamboating .... 325 

Connecticut Valley Inventors of the Steamboat — Claims of John 
Fitch and Samuel Morey to Priority over Fulton — Morey's tiny 
Steamer on the River — First Steamboats in Regular Service — 
Gallant Efforts for Steamboat Navigation to the Upper Valley — 
Triumphant Progress of the Pioneer " Bamet " up to Bellows Falls 

— The "Ledyard's" Achievement in Reaching Wells River — A 
Song of Triumph by a Local Bard — The last Fated Up-River Enter- 
prise — Steamboating on the Lower Reaches — Dickens's Voyage 
in the " Massachusetts " — End of Passenger Service above Hartford. 

III. TOPOGRAPHY OF RI^^:R ANT) VALLEY 

XXIV. "The Beautiful River" 345 

Winding down its Luxurious Valley 360 Miles to the Sea — Ahnost a 
Continuous Succession of Delightful Scenerj- — The River's Highland 
Fountains — The four Upper Connecticut Lakes — Topography of 
the Valley — The bounding Summits — The River's Tributaries — 
Historic Streams entering from Each Side — The Tenace System — 



Contents xiii 

PAGE 

Charming Intervals with deep-spreading Meadows — The Panorama 
in Detail from the Headwaters to Long Island Sound — Fossil Foot- 
prints of the Lower Valley. 

XXV. Along the Uppee Valley 367 

The Romantic Region about the Connecticut Lakes — Pioneer Upper 

Settlements — Story of a Forest State of the Eighteen-Twenties and 
Thirties — At the Valley's Head — Upper Coos Towns — Old Trail 
from Canada to Maine — The Country of the Fifteen-Miles Falls 

— Lower Coos Towns — About the Great and Little Ox-Bows — 
Dartmouth College and its Surroundings — Between White River 
Junction and "Old Number 4" — Historic Towns of the Lower 
Reaches to the Massachiwetts Line. 

XXVI. The Massachtisetts Reach 392 

Northfield's attractive Seat at its Head — The Dwight L. Moody 
Institutions — Landmarlcs of the Indian Wars — Clarke's Island 
and its Spectre Pirate — Rural Hill Towns below Northfield — 
Beautiful Greenfield — Turner's Falls — Historic Deerfield — Rare 
Deerfleld Old Street and its Landmarks — Picturesque Sunderland 
and Whately — Old Hatfield and Hadley — The Russell Parsonage 
and the " Regicides" — " Elm Valley": a fine Type of the Colo- 
nial Farm-seat. 

XIXVII. CiTiEf? OP THE Massachusetts Reach . . 406 

Northampton, the "Meadow City" — Its Crop of Exceptional Men 

— The Dwights and the Whitneys — Sites of Jonathan Edwards's • 
Home and Pulpit — Scenes of the Ely Insurrection and of Shays's 
Rebellion — Smith College — An Educational Centre — Mounts 
Tom and Holyoke — Holyoke, the " Paper City " — Its great Hy- 
draulic Works — Chioopee and its Notable Manufactures — Spring- 
field, the "Queen City" — Beauty of its Setting — Its choice Insti- 
tutions — The United States Arsenal — Scene of the Overthrow of 
Shays's Rebellion. 

XXVIII. The Lower Valley 430 

Enfield and Suffield at the Connecticut State Line — Windsor Locks 
and Warehouse Point — Site of Pynchon's Warehouse of 1636 — 
Ancient Windsor to-day and its Landmarks — Charms of the East- 
Side Windsors — A Romance of the Colony — Roger Wolcott and 
his Homestead — Birthplace of Jonathan Edwards — Timothy Ed- 
wards and his remarkable Family — Modem Hartford : Yet a 
" Gallant Towne " — Its Historic and Literary Landmarks — Trinity 
College. 



xvi Illustrations 

PAGE 

Door of the "Ensign Sheldon House," with its 
"Hatchet-Hewn Face." Relic of the Sack of 
Deerfield, February, 1703/4 .... 164 

The "Redeemed Captive's" Son, Stephen Williams, 
Minister of Longmeadow for Sixty-six Years 
(1716-1782) ........ 180 

White River Junction, and West Lebanon, New 

Hampshire Side ....... 186 

White River Junction and Lebanon Bridge, at High 

Water 188 

The Great Ox Bow, Newbury, Vermont Side . . 202 

Site of the Historic Fort "No. 4" of the French and 

Indian Wars, Charlestown . . .210 

A River Island — -Chase's Island, Looking North . 220 

An Island View, near Hanover .... 224 

Windsor Bridge, Windsor, Mount Ascutney in the 

Distance ........ 230 

Pine Grove on the River's Bank, near Hanover . 234 

View from Kilburn Peak, near Bellows Falls, Look- 
ing South — Kilburn Peak Side at the Left . . 244 

The Bend — Two Miles North of Hanover -252 

Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779), Founder of Dart- 
mouth College ....... 258 

From an old painting. 

John Wheelock (1754-1817), Son of Eleazar Wheelock, 

Second President of Dartmouth College . . 264 

Dartmouth College in 1790 ..... 300 
From a print in the Massachusetts Magazine, 1800. 

A Typical Chain Ferry ...... 308 

Seal of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals. Show- 
ing THE Contrivance First Used at South Hadley 
for Passing Boats . . . . , .312 



Illustrations 

Remains of the Old Olcott Falls Locks, New Hamp- 
shire Side. Two Miles North of White River 
Junction ........ 

Olcott Falls Dam of To-day, Olcott 

The Modern Olcott — "Wilder's" .... 

Entrance of the Enfield Canal at Windsor Locks . 

The River between Fairlee and Orford. Scene of 
the Trials of Morey's First Steamboat, 1792-93 

Middle Haddam Landing 

Rock Landing ..... 

East Haddam Upper Landing 

Deep River Landing .... 



Modern Steamboating on the River — -The ' 
Line" ...... 



Hartford 



Fountains of the River. The Upper Connecticut 
Lake ......... 

Fountains of the River. First, or Connecticut, 
Lake — Mount Magalloway at the Left 

McIndoe's — Below the Fifteen-Miles Falls 

Bellows Falls Dam ....... 

At the Head of the Massachusetts Reach — North- 
field: the Dwight L. Moody Institutions on the 
Left Bank .... 

The Straits — Below Middletown 

Looking toward the Straits 

The Promontory — ^Above Saybrook 

A Logmen's Houseboat 

Breaking up A Log Jam 



XVll 

PAGE 



314 
316 
318 
324 

330 
332 
334 
336 
338 

340 

346 

350 
356 
358 

360 
362 

364 
366 
368 

370 



xviii Illustrations 

PAGE 

Junction of the Ammonoosuc, Wells River, and the 
Connecticut — Woods ville, New Hampshire Side . 372 

The Little Ox Bow — Haverhill, New Hampshire Side 374 

Dartmouth College Bridge. Between Norwich, 

Vermont Side, and the College Town . . . 376 

Dartmouth College — The Campus .... 378 

Dartmouth College — Dartmouth Hall . . . 380 

Dartmouth College — The College Inn and the 

College Club, from the Campus .... 382 

Dartmouth College — Looking down from the Tower 

IN the College Park ...... 384 

John Ledyard, the Traveller ..... 386 
"One of the most romantic and original manifestations of 
the Dartmouth spirit." 

Dartmouth College^The Rollins Chapel . . . 388 

Suspension Bridge, near Brattleborough . . 390 

Deerfield Old Street, 1671-1906 .... 394 

Looking down from Sugarloaf, South Deerfield — 

Sunderland across the River .... 398 

"Elm Valley" — The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Home- 
stead, Hadley ....... 402 

"One of the finest types of the Colonial Farm Seat in the 
VaUey." 

Round Hill, Northampton, in the Eighteen-thirties 404 
(The period of Cogswell and Bancroft's Round Hill School 

for Boys here.) 
From an old print. 

Jonathan Edwards ....... 406 

From a portrait of 1740, the most authentic portrait 
existing. 

Wife of Jonathan Edwards ..... 406 

From a portrait of 1740. 



Illustrations xix 



PAGE 



The Jonathan Edwards Elm, Northampton: in Front 
OF THE Whitney House on the Site of the House 
of Jonathan Edwards. The Whitney Family 
Grouped about the Tree ..... 408 

Smith College — College Hall ..... 410 

From photographs by Miss Katherine E. McClellan, 
Northampton. 

Smith College — The Students' Building . . .412 

Smith College — Seelye Hall ..... 414 
From photographs by Miss Katherine E. McClellan, 
Northampton. 

Smith College — View across the Campus . . . 416 

Smith College Commencement, 1905, Ivy Day . . 418 

From a photograph by Miss Katherine E. McClellan, 
Northampton. 

The Railroad up Mount Tom ..... 420 

The Dam at Holyoke ...... 422 

Holyoke. Looking North from the City Hall . . 424 

City Library and Art Museum, Springfield . . 426 

The Springfield Home of George Bancroft . . 428 

A Connecticut Valley Tobacco Farm . . .432 

The Connecticut State Capitol and Bushnell Park, 

Hartford ........ 438 

Main Street, Hartford ...... 440 

Old State House, Hartford, and City Hall. Place 
OF the Sitting of the Hartford Convention during 
the War of 1812 ....... 442 

The Charter Oak, Hartford ..... 444 

Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Hartford . 446 

The Portland Quarry ...... 448 



XX Illustrations 



PAGB 



Wesleyan University — "College Row" . . . 450 

Wesleyan University — North College. Destroyed 

BY Fire March i, 1906 ..... 452 

Wesleyan University — Wilbur Fisk Hall . . 454 

Wesleyan University — Orange Judd Hall of Natural 

Science ........ 456 

Wesleyan University — Scott Laboratory of Physics 458 

Wesleyan University — Memorial Chapel . . . 460 

Saybrook Lighthouse at the River's Mouth . . 462 

Map of the Connecticut River .... at end 



I 

HISTORICAL 



The Connecticut River 



I 

Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 

Adriaen Block on the River in 1614 — First of European Navigatoi-s to Enter and 
Explore it — His Sixty-mile Cruise up the Stream in an American Built 
Yacht — Story of Block and his Voyage along the New England Coast — 
Action by the States General on his Discoveries — The "Figurative Map" 
— A Remarkable Coincidence — The Dutch alone Established on the River 
for nearly Eighteen Years — The first Rapier Thnist between the_ Dutch 
and the English. 

IN the year 1614 Adriaen Block, Dutch navigator, 
came first of all Europeans upon the Connecticut and 
explored its lower waters for sixty miles in an American 
built "yacht." That was six years before the advent of 
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and before a single enduring 
settlement of white men had been effected on the North 
Atlantic coast. The native Indians called the stream 
Quinni-tickq-ut, or Quoneh-ta-cut, the "Long Tidal River." 
Block, perceiving a strong downward current a short dis- 
tance above its mouth, named it De Versche Riviere, the 
" Freshwater River." Block's name held with the Dutch 
who came after him so long as they remained about the 
River. The English adopted that of Connecticut, a form 
evolved from the more euphonious and significant Indian 
name. 

Unkind and partisan historians have sought to rob the 



2 Connecticut River 

Dutch of the credit of the River's first discovery and its 
opening to civilization. Some have belittled Block's 
achievement by dwelling upon the unfruitful discoveries, 
or reputed discoveries, of earlier navigators. Some insist 
that Estevan Gomez, the Portuguese navigator in the ser- 
vice of Spain, was the true discoverer, when he skirted the 
coast from Labrador to Florida in 1525. Others are dis- 
posed to credit its discovery to Giovanni de Verrazzano, 
the Florentine corsair, commanding the first North Ameri- 
can expedition sent out by the king of France, who sailed 
the coast from North Carolina to Newfoundland two years 
before Gomez, and discovered New York, Block Island, and 
Narragansett Bay. But it is not at all clear that either of 
these mariners even sighted this River. Verrazzano appar- 
ently v/as quite ignorant of its existence, for he passed 
Long Island on the sea side. In his letter to the king 
(the genuineness of which is no longer questioned by most 
authorities) he records no incident of his voyage between 
New York and Narragansett Bay. His first mention is of 
Block Island, to which he gave the name of " Luisa," in 
compliment to the King's " illustrious mother," Louise of 
Saxony. As for Gomez, there is little or nothing substan- 
tial of record concerning his voyage. Indeed, Professor 
George Dexter, most thorough of investigators, has shown 
that it is impossible to determine with certainty in what 
direction Gomez explored the American coast. His ex- 
plorations were of no value whatever with respect to our 
River. While these and perhaps other navigators may have 
coasted in its neighborhood, it remained virtually unknown 
to Europeans and untouched by European craft till Block, 
under the Dutch flag, turned his prow into its placid 
waters. 

Just as to the Dutch, and Henry Hudson sailing under 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 3 

their patronage, belongs the credit of the practical dis- 
covery and opening of the great river of New York, so to 
the Dutch and Adriaen Block is due the honor of the dis- 
covery and occupation of the great river of New England, 
an achievement as important in its way in the consequences 
that followed. 

That the Dutch were unable long to hold the River 
after the English pushed in is no justification for filching 
from them the laurels that they fairly won. Nor was the 
successful elbowing of them from the fertile lands and the 
River's trade, by virtue of conflicting claims, warrant for 
the assumption that they, albeit the first comers, were the 
interlopers. While it is apparent that the rich intervals 
of the Valley were lovelier in the Dutchman's eye for the 
profitable beaver-skins to be gathered here than as the 
" home and inheritance of his race," he had doubtless come 
to stay. It is doubtless as true that when the Englishman 
had once got the " smell of the excellence and conveni- 
ence of the River," he was bound to possess it whether or 
no, quieting his conscience with the reflection that it were 
" a sin to leave uncultivated so valuable a land which could 
produce such excellent com." True, too, that the fixed 
settlement of communities, the establishment of the town, 
and the organization of government came with the Eng- 
lish. But let the Dutch have the credit which is justly 
theirs for discovering and opening the way ; and not the 
less for carrying themselves on the whole with patience 
and discretion when their stolid eyes witnessed the pressing 
of their more rapid competitors upon their preserves. 

Adriaen Block was no ordinary mariner. He had made 
a previous voyage from Holland to Manhattan in or about 
1612, in company with another worthy Dutch captain, 
Hendrich Christiaensen. That was a venture planned by 



4 Connecticut River 

Chi'istiaensen for observation and trade about Hudson's 
River. Christiaensen had been in the neighborhood of 
Manhattan the previous year, when returning from a voy- 
age to the West Indies, and had then determined that his 
next adventure should be to this region. Thus it was that 
the scheme with Block was projected. The two comrades 
came out in a ship presumably chartered by themselves. 
They remained at Manhattan only long enough, apparently, 
to take on a cargo of furs and two " passengers." The 
passengers were natives, sons of " the chiefs there," whom 
they captured or had enticed to their vessel. Back in 
Holland the reports which they made of the riches of the 
new country, with the exhibition of the two Indians, — 
Orson and Valentine the dusky natives were called, — 
" added fresh impetus to the awakened enterprise of the 
Dutch merchants." For now, with the United Netherlands 
just emerged as an independent nation, the Dutch were 
leading in maritime commerce. Three merchants of Am- 
sterdam, one of them Hans Horgers, a director of the 
East India Company, which had fitted out the " Half 
Moon" for Hudson in 1609, were quickest to act. Two 
vessels, the "Fortune" and the "Tiger," were equipped, 
and, placed respectively under the commands of Clmstiaeu- 
sen and Block, were despatched forthwith for traffic and 
exploration in the new region. 

This was the voyage, begun in the summer of 1613, 
that brought Block to his discoveries. Other Dutch mer- 
chants almost immediately joined in the adventure, and 
close upon the "Fortune" and the "Tiger" three more 
ships were sent out under venturesome captains. These 
Dutch mariners were all exploring this region at the same 
time with Christiaensen and Block. 

Had not Block's " Tiger" met with disaster, the course 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 5 

of our history might have been changed. Certainly a 
different story would have been told. Block was at Man- 
hattan making ready to return to Holland with a full cargo 
of peltry on board his ship when she suddenly caught fire 
and was entirely destroyed. Her loss was his opportunity. 
He at once set about the building of a new craft from the 
fine ship's timber then abundant on Manhattan. Winter 
apjjroaching he and his companions put up some rude huts 
for shelter near the southern point of the island. These 
were probably the first white men's habitations in New 
York. The work on the new ship occupied the winter, 
during which the Dutclmaen were generously supplied with 
food "and all kinds of necessities" by the friendly native 
savages. In the spring the vessel was ready for launching. 
She took the water with the name of Onrust, — the 
" Restless," — a fitting title, as it proved, for the animated 
career in store for her. Her measm-ements were thus of 
record : thirty-eight feet keel, forty-four and a half feet 
upper length, eleven and a half feet wide ; and about eight 
casts or sixteen tons burthen. 

Such was the little craft that has sailed into history as 
the " first American-built yacht." But the " Virginia of 
Sagadahoc," that " pretty pinnace " of thirty tons, built by 
the unhappy Popham Colony and launched on the Kenne- 
bec of Maine six years earlier, should not be ignored . The 
" Virginia," to be sure, had no such brilliant record as the 
" Restless." Her employment was not in gallant adventure, 
but in the dismal task of conveying a freight of disheart- 
ened colonists back to Europe upon the abandonment of an 
ill-advised settlement. Yet she was the pioneer American 
yacht, the forerunner of the great ship-building interests 
on the Kennebec, and should have the head place in the 
line. The " Restless " has glory sufficient as the " pioneer 



6 Connecticut River 

yessel launched by white men on the waters " of commer- 
cial New York ; the first of American build to sail through 
Long Island Sound, aroimd Cape Cod, and up Massachu- 
setts Bay, when no white man's plantation was anywhere 
in the region ; and the first of all craft of white men to 
enter and explore " The Beautiful River." 

It was a spring day, one of those fragrant days which 
bloom upon Manhattan in the vernal season, it is pleasant 
to fancy, when Block embarked with his crew in his 
" Restless " and pointed her nose eastward. Sailing boldly 
through the whirlpool of Hell Gate, the first European 
pilot to make this perilous strait, and giving it its expres- 
sive name, he entered the Sound, — the "Great Bay" as 
he termed it. Cautiously skirting the northern shore, he 
passed the group of islands off Norwalk, which he called 
the " Archipelagos." Farther along he discovered the 
Housatonic, the " river from over the mountains," as its 
Indian name is said to imply, which enters the Sound at 
the present Stratford. This he described as a " bow-shot 
wide," and named it the "River of Roodenberg" or Red 
HiUs. Passing by the bay at the head of which New Haven 
lies, he coursed on till he came to " the mouth of a large 
river running up northerly into the land." Observing 
here but few natives about the shores, he turned from tlie 
" Great Bay " and ventiu:ed the unknown stream. 

So it happened that this River was discovered and its 
exploration begun by a Dutchman in an American-built 
yacht. 

Block, as he sailed up the River, made careful notes of 
stream and shore. He found the water at the entrance 
" very shallow," and soon observed the fresh downward 
current which suggested his name for the River. Follow- 




o 
U 

•5 









U 



1) 



u 

Q 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 7 

ing the winding course, now between greening meadows, 
now past hilly banks, again by fertile intervals, by forest- 
fringed shores and through the narrow pass, the explorer 
saw Uttle of human life till a point which he reckoned as 
about forty-five miles above the mouth was reached : the 
first principal bend at the present Middletown. Here In- 
dians became numerous, and he marked then- lodges on 
both sides for a considerable distance up the stream, and 
learned that they were of the " nation called Seguins," one 
of the largest of the River tribes. Farther along, at about 
the present Hartford, and above, he came to " the country 
of the Nawaas," where "the natives plant maize." At a 
point on the east side, where is now South Windsor, be- 
tween the two tributaries, the Podunk and Scantic Rivers, 
was their fortified village. This was palisaded or paled 
about for defence against the intruding Pequots, the com- 
mon enemy of the River tribes, and originally of the Mo- 
hican nation of the Hudson River country, who, driven 
from their old homes by the Mohawks, had invaded Con- 
necticut and planted themselves in seized territory on the 
Sound shores west of the Thames River. 

At this village Block made a landing and had " parley" 
with the curious people, whom he found friendly and com- 
mimicative. From them he learned of another nation of 
savages dwelling "within the land," presumably about the 
lakes west of the far upper parts of the River, who navi- 
gated it in " canoes made of bark," and brought down rich 
peltry: very practical information to carry back to the 
trading merchants in Holland. Reembarking, our intrepid 
mariner continued up stream without fm-ther incident, so 
far as his relation indicates, till he reached the Enfield 
Rapids, through which he could not pass. Here, therefore, 
his exploration ended, and putting his ship about he re- 



8 Connecticut River 

turned to the Sound, after exploring practically the entire 
length of the River in the present state of Connecticut. 
He never saw the River again. 

His voyage continued down the Sound eastward with a 
succession of important discoveries. He took note, first, 
of the Thames River, to which he gave the name of 
" River of the Siccanomos." Here he found the Pequots 
— Pequatos he termed them — in possession of the country. 
Observing land across the Sound and making for it, he 
discovered it to be the eastern extremity of Long Island. 
He was thus the first to determine the insular character of 
that great strip of territory. The point, now Montauk, 
was named " Visscher's Hoeck." Sailing then northeast- 
ward he came upon Block Island, Verrazzano's discovery 
of nearly a century before. Upon this his own name was 
bestowed, and it remains the sole memorial of his exploits. 
Next, following Verrazzano's track, he explored Narragan- 
sett Bay. Point Judith he named Wapanoos Point, from 
the Indian tribe whom he found dwelling along the westr 
em shore of the bay, and described as " strong of limb " 
but of " moderate size." Rhode Island he called " Roodt 
Eijlandt " from its " reddish appearance," through the prev- 
alence of red clay on parts of it. Still onward, he ''' ran 
across " the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, by Cuttyhunk, where 
Bartholomew Gosnold had attempted a plantation twelve 
years before. Thence he sailed by Martha's Vineyard, and, 
southward, by No Man's Land, naming the latter " Hen- 
drick Christiaensen's Island," in compliment to his brother 
mariner ; passed through Nantucket Sound ; explored the 
shores of Cape Cod ; coasted Cape Cod Bay ; glanced per- 
haps toward Plymouth Harbor; and, entering Massachu- 
setts Bay, explored its primeval shores as far north as 
Nahant Bay, — the " Pye Bay " of the Dutch navigators. 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 9 

About Nahant he found dwelling " a numerous people." 
They were " extremely good looking," but " shy of Chris- 
tians," and it required " some address " to approach them, 
— fit forerunners of the latter-day summer dwellers on 
this choice rocky peninsula reaching out into the sea, 
which rare "Tom Appleton" of the dead and gone "Bos- 
ton wits" so artfully renamed "Cold Roast Boston." 
Salem, also. Block may have approached, for on the Dutch 
map afterward made in accordance with his narrative its 
harbor is set down as " Count Hendrick's Bay." 

This was the extent of Block's adventure, to which the 
stock histories give scant attention. Going back to Cape 
Cod, he there fell in with the " Fortune," Christiaensen, 
apparently, having been exploring northward from Man- 
hattan. Comparing notes, the comrades determined to re- 
turn at once to Holland and re23ort iipon their discoveries. 
So Block tm"ned his " Restless " over to Cornells Hendrick- 
sen, a companion of Christiaensen, and the two captains 
set sail on the " Fortune " for home. 

At Amsterdam Block appears to have told his story so 
well that the merchant traders took instant action to 
secm'e the benefits of his exploration. They organized 
the Amsterdam Trading Company ; caused a " Figurative 
Map " to he prepared from Block's data, if not under his 
personal supervision ; promptly laid this map with an 
account of the discoveries before the States General ; and 
on the strength of the documentary evidence asked for a 
trading license in accordance with an ordinance passed a 
few months before, offering to " whosoever should . . . dis- 
cover any new passages, havens, lands, or places," the exclu- 
sive right of navigating the same for four voyages. The 
charter for the four voyages was duly executed, their High 



10 Connecticut River 

Mightinesses giving the company a monopoly of trade in 
the region described for a period of three years. This in- 
strument bore date of October 11, 1614, and in it appeared 
for the first time the term " New Netherland " as the offi- 
cial designation of the " unoccupied region of America lying 
between Virginia and Canada." The sea coast of New 
Netherland was declared to extend from the fortieth to the 
forty-fifth degree of north latitude, the Dutch discoveries 
being defined as lying between these latitudes. On the 
" Figurative Map " the English possessions under the gen- 
eral term of Virginia are represented as extending south- 
ward of the fortieth degree, and the French Canada and 
Acadia northward of the forty-fifth degree. The interme- 
diate region, which the Dutch now claimed. Block and the 
other Dutch navigators described correctly as then " inhab- 
ited only by aboriginal savage tribes," and yet " unoccupied 
by any Christian prince or state." This was the first Dutch 
charter, obtained upon the report of the discoverer and first 
navigator of oiu- River. 

Although the intermediate region was included in the 
general English claim long set up to vast parts of North 
America in right of discovery by the Cabots, and although 
part of it was covered by King James's first Virginia pa- 
tents of 1606, pos-session by colonization, held by all to be 
requisite to complete title by discovery, had not been ac- 
complished within it, the settlement at Jamestown being 
below the fortieth degree. It is true that at the same time 
that Block was exploring our River and down the coast, 
Captain John Smith, with colonization in view, was taking 
his observations up the coast between Penobscot Bay and 
Cape Cod. It was certainly a remarkable coincidence, 
quite a romance of history, that almost at the very moment 
that the Figurative Map with Block's description was be- 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 11 

fore the States General at the Hague, Smith's map with 
the story of his adventures was engaging Prince Charles 
at Loudon ; and that the names of New Netherland and 
New England should be applied simultaneously to over- 
lapping territories, neither body at the time being aware 
of what the other was doing. But had the statesmen at 
the Hague been cognizant of the proceedings at London, 
they might, as Brodhead (History of New York) says, 
" justly have considered the territory which they now form- 
ally named New Netherland as a ' vacuum domicilimn ' 
fairly open to Dutch enterprise and occupation." Subse- 
quently, however, the New Netherland bounds were more 
closely defined as between " South Bay," or the Delaware, 
on the south, and " Pye Bay," or Nahant, on the north. 
Thus matters remained till 1620, when James of England 
granted his sweeping Great Patent for New England in 
America, which embraced all the region extending from 
the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of latitude, and be- 
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific, and so absorbed the 
territory of the French Acadia and the Dutch New Nether- 
land. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company received 
then* charter from the States General with power to " col- 
onize, govern, and defend " New Netherland. Then the 
trouble began. 

With the issue of the charter of 1614 Adriaen Block 
disappears from our story. He was named with the other 
ship-captains in the employ of the Amsterdam merchants 
for the four voyages authorized ; but he did not return to 
American waters. Lambrecht van Tweenhuysen, one of 
the joint owners of the lost " Tiger," having become con- 
cerned in the Northern Company, chartered earlier in 1614 
for the whale fishery in the Arctic Ocean and for the 



12 Connecticut River 

exploration of a new passage to China, prevailed upon him 
to take command of some ships for this business. That 
he sailed for the Arctic Ocean early in 1615 is the last 
fact concerning him which history records. 

And what of the " Restless " ? Skipper Hendricksen 
sailed her in further exploration of the coasts. In 1G16 
she explored the Delaware and the adjacent shores from 
that river's mouth to the upper waters, discovering the 
Schuylkill and other streams. She was also engaged in 
traffic with the Delaware Indians in sealskins and sables ; 
but she does not appear again on our River, and her ultimate 
fate is unknown. 

The Amsterdam ships coming out under the charter of 
1614 were soon here trading in peltry with the River In- 
dians, as well as cruising about Manhattan and the Hudson. 
Others in the service of the West India Company followed, 
enjoying a profitable trade. As a rule these Dutch traders 
treated the natives decently and kept their good will. 
But Jacob Eelkens, commissary at Fort Orange, smirched 
the record by a treacherous act. While here in the sum- 
mer of 1622, trading with the Sequins, he invited their 
confiding chief to his ship, and when the savage was en- 
joying Eelkens' hospitality he was seized, and held captive 
till a handsome ransom in wampum was paid over. This 
performance so incensed the River tribes that they cut off 
all dealings with the Dutch till they heard that Eelkens 
had been removed from his post ; as he fortunately was 
soon after. 

For nearly eighteen years after Block's entry Dutch 
ships only visited the River and cultivated the profitable 
Indian trade. Neither Pilgrim nor Puritan vessel appeared 
in its waters till 1631. It was unknown to the Plymouth 



Dutch Discovery and First Occupation 13 

men till the Dutch at Manhattan told them of it and in- 
vited them hither. " Seeing them seated in a barren quar- 
ter" on the Plymouth sands, the Dutch commended the 
region to them '' for a fine place both for plantation and 
trade," and "wished them to make use of it." This was 
about the year 1627, when messages of " friendly kindness 
and good neighborhood " were passing between New Am- 
sterdam and New Plymouth. The Pilgrims' " hands " 
"being full otherwise" at that time they expressed their 
thanks for the invitation, and let the matter pass. But at 
the outset, in these exchanges of coiu-tesies, Bradford was 
politely cautioning the Dutch against settling or trading 
within the limits of the patent of New England, while 
Minuit was as poUtely asserting their right and liberty 
under the authority of the States General to settle and 
trade where they were. 

These were the first rapier thrusts, sharp, though given 
with delicacy on both sides, which opened the struggle 
for supremacy on our River, in which the English finally 
triumphed. 



II 

English Occupation 

First Move by the Plymouth Men in 1633 — Banished River Sachems in Plymouth 
and Boston — Edward Winslow's PreUminary Exploration — Disingenu- 
ousness of the Bay Colony Leaders — Their Prospecting Parties iu the River 
Region — Exchange of Letters as to Dutch and English Rights — Affairs 
Shaping for a Pretty Quarrel — The Dutch "House of Hope" — The 
"Lords and Gentlemen's" Patent — Entry of the Pilgrims — Ignoring 
the Dutchmen's Challenge — Van Twiller's formidable Protest. 

THE Pilgrims of Plymouth were the first English to 
plant on the River, coming in 1633, six years after 
the Dutch had invited them to the region. Long before, 
however, the Dutch had repented that invitation, and now, 
having strengthened their preserves, were fortifying them- 
selves against English intrusion. 

The Pilgrims began seriously to consider the move in 
1631, after a visit from some of the River sachems who had 
been banished from their country by the conquering Pequots, 
and were seeking English aid to their restoration. These 
sachems appeared in Plymouth early that year and urged 
the colony to set up a trading house on their territory, 
promising " much trade " and other advantages. Their 
proposition was heard with attention, but no assurance of 
acceptance was then given. 

Accordingly the sachems next went up to Boston and 
solicited the Puritans of the Bay Colony " in like sort." 
Thus the Baymen first heard of the nature of the rich region. 
Of their interview Winthrop makes note in his Journal 
imder date of April 4, 1631. The ambassadors appeared 

14 



Englisli Occupation 15 

in Boston in state. The chief, the sagamore "Wahgin- 
nacut," as Winthrop spells him, was supported by two east- 
em chiefs friendly to the colonists, and " divers of their san- 
nops." The sagamore expressed his desire to have some 
Englishmen "come plant" in his "very fruitful country," 
and offered to " find them corn and give them yearly 
eighteen skins of beaver." He asked to have some men 
sent back with his party to look over the country for them- 
selves. Winthrop and the council listened interestedly, 
but like the Pilgrim leaders were non-committal. The gov- 
ernor entertained his savage guests at dinner, and treated 
them handsomely, but he foimd it impracticable just then 
to send any representatives to the River. It was not till 
after their departure that the governor discovered that 
"the said sagamore" was "a very treacherous man and 
at war with the Pekoath [Pequot], a far greater sagamore." 
So Winthrop apparently dismissed " the incident " as closed, 
just as the Indians fancied Bradford had done. But the 
pictm-e of the " very fruitful lands" and the prospect of a 
boimtiful trade ready for profitable harvest were pleasing 
to the commercial minds of both colonies ; and both bided 
their time. 

Meanwhile investigations were quietly made through 
their own agents. In the summer or early autumn follow- 
ing the visit of the sachems, Edward Winslow sailed into 
the River with a Pilgrim crew on a voyage of exploration. 
So impressed was he with the smiling shores that he straight- 
way "pitched upon a place for a house." The Dutch as yet 
had only a rude palisaded trading post on the River banks, 
at the point where Hartford now stands. From the fact 
that there appeared to be no evidence of colonization, 
coupled with the general claim of the English to the re- 
gion, Winslow was afterward assimied to have been the 



16 Connecticut River 

true discoverer of the River. It was the dictum of the 
commissioners of the United Colonies, in their declaration 
against the Dutch in 1653, that "Mr. Winslow discovered 
the Fresh River when the Dutch had neither trading house 
nor any pretence to a foot of land there." 

After this opening voyage Pilgrim ships frequented the 
River and trade with the natives was pursued by them " not 
without profit." So matters continued through about a 
year and a half, or till the summer of 1633, when the Pil- 
grims had at last become ready to adopt the repeatedly re- 
newed plan of the banished sachems. They were the more 
speedily moved to this course by reports of the activity of 
the Dutch in prejjarations to head the English oE the River. 
From a Plymouth trading pinnace retm-ned from Manhat- 
tan it was learned that the Dutch had ah'eady procured 
an Indian title to strengthen their claim, and were about 
to build a fort to defend it. 

A proposal was now made by Plymouth to the Bay men 
that the two colonies should jointly engage in the trading 
establishment, and Winslow and Bradford made a pilgrim- 
age to Boston to confer with them upon the matter. The 
negotiations failed, however, the Bay men advancing vari- 
ous weak objections, and displaying a timidity which must 
have surprised their humbler brethren at the time, but 
which after events appeared sufficiently to explain. Let 
Bradford's and Winthrop's versions of this conference be 
given in then- own words : 

Bradford's. "A time of meeting was appointed at the ]Massa- 
chusetts and some of the chief here were appointed to treat with them, 
and went accordingly ; but they [the Bay men] cast many fears of 
danger &c., loss and the like, which was perceived to be the main 
obstacles, though they alleged they were not provided of trading 
goods. But those here [the Plymouth men] offered at present to 
put in sufficient for both, {provided they would become engaged for 



English Occupation 17 

the half, and prepare against the next year. They confessed more 
could not be offered, but thanked them, and told them they had no 
mind to it. They [the Plymouth men] then answered they hoped it 
would be no offence unto them [the Bay men] if themselves went 
on without them, if they saw it meet. They said there was no rea- 
son they should ; and thus this treaty broke off." 

WiNTHROp's. [July 12, 1633.] "Mr. Edward "Winslow, gov- 
ernor of Plimouth, and Mx. Bradford came into the bay, and went 
away the 18th. They came partly to confer about joining in a trade 
to Connecticut for beaver and hemp. There was a motion to set up 
a trading house there to prevent the Dutch, who were about to build 
one ; but in regard the place was not fit for plantation, there being 
three or four thousand warlike Indians, and the river not to be gone 
into but by smaller pinnaces, having a bar affording but six feet at 
high water, and for that no vessels can get in for seven months in the 
year, partly by reason of the ice, and then the violent stream etc., we 
thought not fit to meddle with it." 

So the Plymouth men went in alone. While, however, 
they were making their preparations, only a few weeks after 
the Boston conference, two Bay colony expeditions into the 
River country were under way. In August Winthrop's 
"Blessing of the Bay" (the first ship built in Massachu- 
setts) slipped out of Boston harbor on a trading voyage to 
Long Island Sound, purposing also to take in the River ; 
and about the same time John Oldham with two compan- 
ions set out overland on a prospecting expedition to the Val- 
ley. The " Blessing " duly entered the River, and thus was 
the first Puritan vessel to venture its waters. Thence she 
proceeded to Manhattan, and presented a " commission " 
from the governor of Massachusetts to the director of New 
Netherland, desiring the Dutch to " forbear " building on 
the River, for " the King of England had granted the river 
and country of the Connecticut to his own subjects." The 
company were " very kindly entertained " and " had some 



18 Connecticut River 

beaver and other things for such commodities as they put 
off," while the dnector (now Wouter Van Twiller, the suc- 
cessor of Minuit) wrote his reply to the Bay governor. It 
was a letter " very courteous & respectful as it had been to 
a very honorable person," but very definite. The direc- 
tor " signified that the Lords the States had also granted 
the same parts to the West India Company & therefore 
requested that the English would forbear the same till the 
matter were decided between the King of England and the 
said Lords," so that the two colonies might live "as good 
neighbors in these heathenish countries." The "Blessing" 
was back in Boston with her report on the second of Octo- 
ber. Oldham and his companions had already returned 
with pleasant accounts of their experience and observations. 
They had penetrated to a point on the River about where 
Springfield now is, and had visited a sachem who had " used 
them kindly" and given them some beaver. 

With this information the Bay men rested till the next 
year. Then, when the Pljrmouth men had successfully 
cleared the way, men from the Bay calmly proceeded to 
occupy the River where the Plymouth men had planted, and 
afterward "little better than thrust" them "out." These 
were the after-events which explain the reluctance of the 
Bay leaders to join the Pilgrims in the proposed partner- 
ship, and which led to the unwelcome conckision so deli- 
cately expressed by Savage in his note to the entry in 
Winthrop's Journal of July, 1633, before quoted: "I am 
constrained to remark that the reasons in the text assigned 
. . . look to me more like pretexts than real motives. 
Some disingenuousness, I fear, may be imputed to our 
council in stating difficulties to deter our brethren of the 
humble community of Plimouth from extending their 
limits to so advantageous a situation." Bradford's terser 



English Occupation 19 

comment is that they had a "hankering mind after it" for 
themselves. 

Before the Plymouth men started in affairs about the 
River had shaped themselves for a pretty quarrel . The Dutch 
had fortified their position with an Indian deed of lands on 
either side of the River, which they had procured in June 
from " Tattoebum," the Pequot sachem who held the terri- 
tory by conquest; giving in payment for the lands this job 
lot of articles : " 1 piece of duffel 27 ells long, 6 axes, 6 ket- 
tles, 18 knives, one sword blade, 1 pr. of shears, some toys, 
and a musket." They had taken formal possession of the 
mouth of the River at Saybrook Point, an officer of the 
Dutch West India Company, Hans den Sluys, in token there- 
of affixing the arms of the States General to a tree. They 
had completed their trading house and redoubt where their 
palisaded post had been, had mounted two cannon, run up 
the Dutch flag, and given the structm-e the trustful name of 
the "House of Hope." 

So much the Dutch had accomplished since the early 
summer under the energetic orders of Wouter Van Twiller, 
acting under instructions from the home company. Mean- 
while in England a movement was developing which was 
soon to bring a new disturbing factor into the region. In 
the previous year (March, 1631-2), certain " Lords and Gen- 
tlemen" obtained the grant of a great territory extending 
from Point Judith to New York and west to the Pacific, 
and reaching back from the New England coast over Con- 
necticut and a part of Massachusetts ; and steps were now 
taking to plant on the River under this charter. This was 
the instrument, referred to in the histories as the " Old Pa- 
tent of Connecticut," in which Robert, Earl of Warwick, 
conveyed the rights to the tract in question, which he had 



20 Connecticut River 

received from the Plymouth Company in England, to a " syn- 
dicate" composed of Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, Lord 
Rich (the two latter of the family of Warwick), Sir Richard 
Saltonstall, John Pym, and John Hampden, the great com- 
moner. It was brought about through Sir Richard Salton- 
stall of the Bay Colony, and resulted directly from the 
roseate accounts of our River and its fertile lands which 
Sir Richard, returning to England in 1631, had given to his 
friends there. The Dutch West India Company early be- 
came aware of this grant, — perhaps from Minuit, who was 
detained in England at the time, while on his homeward 
journey after his recall, — and the activity of Van Twiller 
was due as much, probably, to a desire to get the Dutch 
preserves here in readiness for defence against the English 
Lords and Gentlemen as against the Plymouth Pilgrims. 

The Plymouth leaders equipped a "great new bark" 
for their voyage of occupation, and put the expedition in 
charge of Lieutenant William Holmes, a resolute man, with 
an equally resolute crew. In the hold of the vessel was 
stored the frame of a small house that had been prepared, 
with "boards to cover and finish it," and other things 
necessary for its quick erection as against hostile attacks. 
A goodly store of provisions was also put in. With the 
ship's company wei'e taken several River Indians, among 
them " Altarbaenhoot " or " Netawanute," sachem of the 
territory whither they were bound, whom the Pequot "Tat- 
toebum" had exiled, and whom they proposed to restore to 
his domain. From him the Plymouth leaders had prev- 
iously acquired the lands they were to occupy. 

The expedition sailed from Plymouth early in October 
and reached the River without incident. So also without 
incident they made the entrance and proceeded up stream 




T3 

O 

O 



English Occupation 21 

to the point where stood the new Dutch " House of Hope," 
with Jacob Van Curler and a small force in charge. As they 
came alongside the fort the " drum-beats resounded from 
the walls, and the cannoniers stood with lighted matches 
beside the two guns, under the banner of New Netherland." 
The Dutch commander challenged, with the demand "what 
they intended and whither they would go." The Pilgrim 
skipper responded, "Up the River to trade." Van Curler 
bade them "strike and stay," or he would order the gun- 
ners to fire. Holmes retorted that they were under com- 
mission from the governor of Plymouth to go up the River 
to the place for which they were boimd, and "go they 
would." The Dutchmen might shoot, but they must obey 
their orders and proceed. They would molest no one, but 
they would go on. And so they did go on, while the 
Dutchmen "threatened them hard" but "shot not." 

Arriving at their destination, at a point just below the 
mouth of the Tunxis, they landed, quickly "clapt up" then- 
house, and unloaded their provisions. This accomplished, 
the bark departed to return to Plymouth, and the little 
band left to establish the plantation proceeded to make 
themselves as comfortable as possible. With a palisade 
erected about their house they were soon in condition to 
defend themselves against the Dutch if further opposed, 
but more especially against the greater danger of the 
Pequot enemies of the sachems whom they reinstated. 
Thus began the first English plantation on the River, which 
became Windsor. 

The Dutch made only one more warlike demonstration 
against these virile " Plymoutheans," and this was deferred 
for some months. First a formal protest was made with 
an order to quit. Upon receiving Van Curler's report, 
Van Twiller at once forwarded to him a notification which 



22 Connecticut River 

was successfully served upon Holmes before the departure 
of the bark. It was a formidable document, but less dan- 
gerous than bullets to both interests : 

"The Director and Council of Nieuw Netherland hereby give 
notice to Mr. Holmes, lieut and trader acting on behalf of the Eng- 
lish governor of Plymouth, at present in the service of that nation, 
that he depart forthwith, with all his people and houses, from the 
lands lying on the Fresh River, continually traded upon by our 
nation, and at present occupied by a fort, which lands have been pur- 
chased from the Indians and paid for. And in case of refusal, we 
hereby protest against all loss and interest which the Privileged 
West India Company may sustain. 

" Given at Fort Amsterdam in Nieuw Netherland, this XXVth 
Octob. 1633." 

A written answer was requested from Holmes, but he 
declined to give it. He would only say that he was here 
"in the name of the King of England whose servant he 
was," and here " he would remain." All this Van Twiller 
reported to his superiors in Holland, and asked for further 
instructions. While he was awaiting them a strategic move 
was attempted to establish a connection with the tribe liv- 
ing above the Plymouth settling place, about where West- 
field, Massachusetts, now is, and head off their trade. 
Thus were repeated the tactics of the Plymoutheans in 
planting themselves above the Dutch. 

But the move failed through the breaking out of the 
smallpox among these Indians with great virulence and 
dreadful mortality. The Dutchmen sent on the mission 
most wretchedly spent the early winter months in the midst 
of this havoc. Finally getting away in February, they 
were kindly taken in at the Plymouth House on their return 
journey, " being almost spent with hunger and cold," and 
here were " refreshed divers days." For this good Sama- 
ritan act those at the House of Hope were most grateful. 



English Occupation 23 

But when at length, in the following summer, Van Twil- 
ler's instructions had come out, the hostile attitude was 
resumed. 

Then the final demonstration was made. A force of 
" about seventy men " was sent from Manhattan to dislodge 
the intruders. The troops approached the English " in a 
warlike manner, with colors displayed." But " seeing them 
strengthened," and that '" it would cost blood " to make an 
attack, the Dutch commander " came to a parley" instead. 
Then he withdrew his force "without offering any vio- 
lence"; and the Plymoutheans were left in peace. 



Ill 

The Pioneer River Settlements 

Puritans from the Bay Colony Entering in 1035 — Beginnings of Wethersfield 
and Windsor — Intrusion on tlie Plymouth Meadows — Governor Brad- 
ford's Ineffectual Protest — The Dream of a " New Plymouth " Dispelled — 
John Winthrop, the Younger, Governor for the " Lords and Gentlemen " — 
Lodgment at the River's Mouth — Coming of Hooker and his Congregation 
in 1636 — The Old Connecticut Path, The Second Connecticut Trait, and 
the Bay Path as traced to-day — Beginnings of Hartford and Springfield — 
Secession of Kiver Towns. 

THE year 1635 was a year of events in the Lower 
Valley. Now the Bay Puritans began to appear in 
considerable numbers. First came prospectors seeking 
the sightliest spots for plantation. By July the agent at 
the Plymouth Trading House, Jonathan Brewster, report- 
ed that Massachusetts men were "coming almost daily, 
some by water and some by land." Following the pros- 
pectors, groups and companies prepared to settle arrived. 

Earliest among these were folk from Watertown and 
Dorchester, with a few from Cambridge, then New Towns. 
Early in November a band of sixty arrived, men, women 
and little children. They had travelled overland by a 
compass, a hundred miles through the wilderness, making 
the autumn journey of two weeks on foot and driving their 
live-stock, cattle, horses, and swine, before them. Aroimd 
by water their household goods were brought, in barks from 
Boston, with provisions for the first winter. 

Before the winter had set in three English plantations 
"were established, and a fourth had been ventured, where 

24 



The Pioneer River Settlements 25 

but one had been at break of smnmer. Below the Dutch 
"House of Hope" a new Watertown had been begun by 
the Watertown group where now is Wethersfield. Above 
the Dutchmen, at Windsor, were the Plymouth folk and the 
settlers from Dorchester cheek by jowl. On the Plymouth 
Great Meadow the Dorchester leaders were beginning a new 
Dorchester, ignoring the Pilgrims' claims to the territory, 
just as the Plymouth men had ignored the claims of the 
Dutch. Unmindful of protest, they were proposing to allow 
the Plymouth House one share only " as to a single family" 
in the distribution of lands. On the same Great Meadow 
the fourth plantation had been attempted as a foothold 
imder the "■ Lords and Gentlemen's" patent. This was an 
undertaking of the '" Stiles party," sent out from England 
by Sir Richard Saltonstall at his personal expense. They 
were a band of twenty men, one or two accompanied by 
their families. Francis Stiles, their leader, was a master 
carpenter from London. He had been instructed to " im- 
pale" grounds for cattle, and to prepare a house against 
the coming of Sir Richard, who never came. The Dorches- 
ter prospectors, returning from a view of lands farther up 
the River toward Enfield Rapids, and finding them here 
about to begin their work, nipped the scheme in the bud. 
Saltonstall's right in the premises was denied, and Stiles 
curtly ordered to "keep hands off." So Stiles prudently 
"stayed his hands," and reported back to Su* Richard. A 
small part of his company returned to England in his ves- 
sel, which was wrecked on the voyage, but her passengers 
were saved. He and the others who remained took up 
lands assigned them in a corner of the Dorchester bailiwick. 
Brewster promptly reported home to Pl3Tnouth the 
intrusion of the Dorchester men, and Governor Bradford as 
promptly entered his protest against tliese "doings and 



26 Connecticut River 

proceedings." They were not only intrusions into the 
" rights and possessions " of the Plymouth Colony, he con- 
tended, but were attempts " in effect to thrust them all 
out"; as it ultimately proved. Brewster early " perceived 
the minds" of the intruders from their servants' talk, but 
treated them from the beginning considerately. The first 
lot of prospectors "had well nigh starved had it not been 
for this liouse for want of victuals," he wrote in one of liis 
reports. A later company he liad entertained with marked 
hospitality. He had supplied them with canoes and guides, 
and had given room to their goods in the Plymouth House. 
He had even been so generous as to go with them to the 
Dutch fort, notwithstanding the strained relations between 
the two houses, to see if he could " procure some of them 
to have quiet settling" in its vicinage. The Dutch "did 
peremptorily withstand them ": quite natm'ally, we should 
say, under the circumstances. Writing before the arrival 
of the main company, Brewster expressed the hope that 
their leaders would " hear reason," and rehearsed the chief 
points of the argument: that the Pilgrims were here first, 
that they had entered with great " difiiculty and danger 
both in regard of the Dutch and Indians," that they had 
bought the land, Iiad since held here a " chargeable posses- 
sion," and had kept the Dutch from further encroaching, 
" which would else before this day have possessed all and 
kept out all others." These considerations he trusted 
would stop them. 

But they did not even check them. Winslow went up 
from Plymouth to Boston and there had a conference with 
the Dorchester leaders without avail. Negotiations with 
the Bay magistrates were also fruitless. " Many were the 
letters and passages" that followed, says Bradford, between 
the aggrieved and the aggressors. His summary of the 



The Pioneer River Settlements 27 

correspondence, disclosing on the one side a curious mixture 
of piety and greed, is interesting reading. 

The Dorchester men started out with the assumption of 
title to the lands they coveted through an act of Provi- 
dence. " God in his providence," they wrote, cast them on 
this identical spot, " and, as we conceive, in a fair way of 
providence, tendered it to us as a meet place to receive our 
body now upon removal." The Plymouth men met this 
sophistry with the blunt retort : " Whereas you say God in 
his providence cast you &c., we told you before and (upon 
this occasion) must now tell you still that our mind is 
otherwise, and that you cast rather a partial, if not a covet- 
ous eye upon that which is your neighbors and not yom-s ; 
and in so doing your way could not be fair unto it. Look 
that you abuse not God's pi'ovidence in such allegations." 
At this the Dorchester men took another tack : " Now, 
albeit we at first judged the place so free that we might 
with God's good leave take and use it, without just offence 
to any man, it being the Lord's waste, and for the present 
altogether void of inhal^itants, that indeed, minded [of] the 
employment thereof to the right end for which land was 
created, Gen. 1 : 28, . . . therefore did we make some 
weak beginnings in that good work in the place aforesaid." 
This reasoning the Plymouth men easily overset with the 
reply : " If it was the Lord's waste it was themselves [the 
Plymouth men] that found it so and not they [the Dorches- 
ter men] ; and have since bought it of the right owners and 
maintained a chargeable possession upon it all this while, 
as themselves could not but know. And because of present 
engagements and other hindrances which lay at present 
upon them [the Plymouth Colony] must it therefore be 
lawful for them [the Dorchester men] to go and take it 
from them?" The hope of the Plymouth Colony to leave 



28 Connecticut River 

the " barren place where they were by necessity cast," and 
make a new Plymouth in Connecticut is then frankly 
stated, and it is pertinently asked, " Why should they [the 
Dorchester men] (because they were more ready and able 
at present) go and deprive them [the Plymouth folk] of that 
which they had with charge and hazard provided and in- 
tended to remove to ? " 

That the Plymouth men had the best of the argument 
must be admitted ; but the Dorchester men had the power. 
So the old familiar story was repeated, as it is still repeated 
over and over in our modern days, in which Might, with 
many pious reflections and pratings of high intentions, 
overthrows Right and struts off proudly locking arms with 
Virtue. The Plymouth men would make no forcible resists 
ance. That was "■ far from their thoughts : to live in contin- 
ual contention with their friends and brethren would be un- 
comfortable, and too heavy a burden to bear." Accordingly, 
for the sake of peace, " though they conceived they suffered 
much in this thing," they finally concluded to give up the 
contest and to enter into treaty as to terms for the release 
of the territory seized. Before undertaking to bargain, 
however, they insisted that the Dorchester men must ac- 
knowledge their right to the territory, else "they would 
never treat about it." This easy point being freely yielded, 
with the abandonment of the providential title to the lands 
as "God's waste," a conclusion was reached "after much 
ado." The Plymouth House was to be retained by the Ply- 
mouth men with a sixteenth part of all the territory that 
they had bought from the Indians : the Dorchester men to 
have the remainder, reserving a moiety for " those of New 
Town" who were coming in, and paying Plymouth "accord- 
ing to proportion what had been disbursed to the Indians." 

Thus, Bradford recorded, " was the controversy ended, 



The Pioneer River Settlements 29 

but the unkindness not so soon forgotten." The dream of 
an ultimate abandonment of their "barren place" on the 
Massachusetts coast for a second New Plymouth in the 
sweet and fertile region of the Connecticut was forever 
dispelled from the Pilgrim mind. The hurt was slow in 
healing. When later two shallops bound from Massachu- 
setts to the River with goods and supplies for the settlers 
were wrecked on the Plymouth shore, one after the other, 
and their cargoes in each case strewn along the beaches, 
were carefully gathered and preserved for their owners by 
the kindly Plymouth folk, the good Bradford wrote down 
in his history : " Such crosses they met in their beginnings ; 
which some imputed as a correction from God for their 
intrusion (to the wrong of others) into the place. But I 
dare not be bold with God's judgment in this kind." 

While these settlements were becoming established up 
the River on either side of the Dutch post, steps were tak- 
ing by stronger agents than Stiles of the " Lords and Gen- 
tlemen " to secure the River's mouth. On the 6th of 
October, 1635, there arrived at Boston the ship "Abigail" 
from England, bringing among her passengers three men 
of note representing dnectly or indirectly the " Lords and 
Gentlemen." These were John Winthrop, Jr., Governor 
Winthrop's eldest and ablest son, who had been back in 
England for a twelvemonth ; young Sir Harry Vane ; and 
the Rev. Hugh Peter. The latter had joined the younger 
Winthrop and Sir Harry by boarding the ship in the 
Downs, after an escape from Holland, where, as the non- 
conforming minister of the English church at Rotterdam, 
he was being persecuted by the English ambassador. The 
younger Winthrop bore a commission from the "Lords and 
Gentlemen," dated July 15, naming him as " governor of 



30 Connecticut River 

thfi River Connecticut with the places adjoinmg thereunto, 
for and during the space of one vphole year after arrival 
there," with " full power to do and execute any such lawful 
act and thing ... as to the dignity or office of a governor 
doth or may appertain." By preliminary articles he en- 
gaged to repair to the River with " all convenient speed," 
and to abide there " for the best advancement of the com- 
pany's service." 

This governor's first duty was to engage, upon his 
arrival at Massachusetts Bay, a force of at least fifty '' able 
men," and to despatch them to erect a fortification at the 
River's entrance and to build houses. The first houses 
were to be for their own needs. After these were up more 
substantial ones were to be erected within the fort, proper 
"to receive men of quality" who were expected later to 
come out and make a noble plantation; but who never 
came. Wintlu-op the younger was provided with four 
hundred pounds to meet first expenses ; and a few men and 
some ammunition for his service came out in tlie "• Abi- 
gail " with him. Haste being necessary because of reported 
intentions of the Dutch, he did not wait to gather the full 
complement of fifty men, but hurried off a force of twenty, 
under one Lieutenant Gibbons and Sergeant Willard, to 
occupy Say brook Point and begin the works. Four days 
later a " norsey " — a North Sea bark — arrived at Boston 
bringing Lieutenant Lion Gardiner with a dozen men and 
" provisions of all sorts " for building a fortification. Lion 
Gardiner was a Scotchman, an accomplished engineer and 
master of fortification, who had been with the Prince of 
Orange in the Low Countries. At Rotterdam, '' through 
the persuasion of Mr. John Davenport [afterward founder 
of New Haven], Mr. Hugh Peter and other well affected 
Englishmen," he had made an agreement with Mr. Peter 



The Pioneer River Settlements 31 

to enter the '' Lords and Gentlemen's " service for a hun- 
dred pounds per annum ; and he had been despatched in 
the " norsey " just after Winthrop the younger had sailed. 
The energetic soldier tarried in Boston only long enough 
to report to the company's governor. Arriving at Say- 
brook Point he proceeded at once to plan and erect the 
Enghsh fort, taking for its site the spot where two years 
before Hans den Sluys had affixed the Dutch arms to a 
tree. In March of the following spring, Winthrop the 
younger himself arrived, and the formal occupation was 
completed. 

At these strenuous proceedings above and below their 
post the Dutchmen were looking out doubtless with aston- 
ished eyes and flushed faces. While the Saybrook fort was 
building an attempt was made to dislodge the English, but 
it met inglorious failure. The ship sent out from Manhat- 
tan for this purpose found two pieces of cannon already 
moimted on the imfinished structvu-e and ready for action. 
Confronted by these guns, the Dutch craft, without a dem- 
onstration, tacked about and silently sailed back whence 
she came. 

Coincident with the beginnings at Saybrook Point, Sir 
Harry Vane, the younger Wintlirop, and Hugh Peter were 
at Boston treating with the Bay Colony men, principally 
the Dorchester leaders, who were moving upon the River, 
in an endeavor to come to a mutual imderstanding. Their 
demands were made with studied courtesy, for they were 
evidently desirous not to antagonize the new settlements. 
They asked that the planters should either entirely give 
place to the Lords and Gentlemen upon full satisfaction for 
their outlay, or make sufficient room for the patentees. 
Putting these demands in writing they addressed them to 
"Our Loving and most respected Friends . . . engaged in 



32 Connecticut River 

the business of Connecticut Plantation." They called for 
"punctual and plain answers" to these direct queries: "(1) 
Whether they do acknowledge the right and claims of the 
said persons of quality, and in testimony thereof will and 
do submit to the counsel and direction of their present 
governor, Mr. John Winthrop, the younger, established by 
commission from them to those parts. (2) Under what 
right and pretense they have lately taken up their plan- 
tations within the precinct before mentioned, and what 
government they intend to live under, because the said 
country is out of the Massachusetts patent." " Our truly 
respected brethren" were desired to take these propositions 
into their " serious and Christian consideration," that their 
" loving resolutions " might promptly be returned to 
England. 

Their "loving resolutions" do not seem to have been 
forthcoming in documentary form. Nor is there record 
of any direct replies, formal or otherwise, to these definite 
queries. Perhaps they were adroitly evaded if not deliber- 
ately ignored. At all events the settlers went on as before, 
continuing their allegiance for the time to the Bay Colony 
government. In February, 1635-6, came Saltonstall's pro- 
test from England against the treatment of his Stiles party 
at Windsor, and this also was without result. The protest 
was couched with the same carefulness that characterized 
the demands of the company's representatives in Boston. 
It was conveyed in a letter to " good Mr. Wintlirop." the 
younger, rather than as an official commimicatiou, lest it 
should " breed some jealousies in the people and so distaste 
them with our government." A desire to cultivate the new 
settlements as a nucleus of their proposed colony is evident 
in all the moves of the Lords and Gentlemen. After the 
receipt of Saltonstall's letter, Winthrop the younger went 



The Pioneer River Settlements 33 

up to Windsor and endeavored unsuccessfully to adjust the 
differences. As Sir Richard had written, the Dorchester 
folk had " carved largely for themselves," and it was plain 
that they meant to hold what they had carved against all 
comers. 

It was fortunate for them, however, and also for the 
other scattered colonists, that the agents of the Lords and 
Gentlemen had started in thus early. For the first winter 
was a cruel one and the Saybrook fortress was a veritable 
house of refuge for many of the settlers. As early as the 
fifteenth of November the River was frozen over, and soon 
heavy snows came. The late autumn arrivals, some from 
Cambridge, but the most from Dorchester, had not com- 
pleted their huts and the shelters for their live stock when 
severe weather was upon them. Some of the cattle could 
not be got across the River, and were left to subsist with- 
out hay in the woods then on the east side. Provisions 
early became scarce in the settlements. The ships which 
had started with supplies from Boston were either wrecked 
or held back by tempestuous storms. So forlorn and 
wretched became their condition that several bands at- 
tempted the perilous journey back to Massachusetts Bay. 
A party of six who sailed for Boston about the middle of 
November were wrecked off the coast near Plymouth. Mak- 
ing the shore they wandered for ten days in the wastes of 
snow. At length, " spent with cold and fatigue," they 
reached Plymouth, where the kind Pilgrims gave them suc- 
cor. Another, a party of thirteen (ominous number !), 
made their way back overland. One of this party was 
drowned in attempting to cross a frozen stream. The others 
got through after a painful journey of ten days. But all 
would have perished had not friendly Indians given them 



34 Connecticut River 

food and shelter along the trail. By early December a com- 
pany of seventy, women and children among them, came 
down the River in the desj^erate hope of meeting their 
delayed provision-ship. About twenty miles above the 
mouth they came upon the " Rebecca," a ship of sixty tons, 
frozen in the ice, and embarked on her. Soon afterward a 
warm rain fell which broke the ice and let the ship loose. 
She set sail with her passengers and proceeded as far as the 
bar, where she stuck and had to be unladen. The half- 
starved colonists were received into Saybrook fort and fed 
and comforted. At length the ship was afloat and reloaded ; 
and again setting sail she finally reached Boston in safety. 
Of those who remained in the up River settlements many 
were obliged to live on acorns, malt, and grain through the 
winter. 

With the advance of spring, however, the hardships of 
the winter were forgotten. As the summer opened, when 
all was again fair and blooming in the genial Valley, immi- 
gration was renewed with greater vigor. Many of the 
disheartened colonists of the winter returned. Then came 
larger bands and more important personages fi'om the Bay 
Colony. On the last day of radiant June, Thomas Hooker 
and his congregation of a hundred started out from Cam- 
bridge (still New Town), almost depopulating that village 
when they left. Theirs was the pilgrimage through the 
wilderness which Trumbull, Palfrey, Bancroft and the rest 
have depicted in their familiar passages, — all dra\vn from 
the same som-ce, — the record in the elder Winthrop's Jom-- 
nal, simple, yet effective, and furnishing full outline for 
the picture : — 

"Jjme SO, 1686. Mr. Hooker, pastor of the church of New 
Town and the [most] of his congregation, went to Connecticut. 
His wife was carried in a horse-litter ; and they drove one hundred 
and sixty cattle, and fed of their milk by the way." 



The Pioneei- River Settlements 35 

They were a goodly company of fine English stock, 
splendid material for colonization. Many of them were 
" persons of figure who had lived in England in honor, 
affluence, and delicacy, and were entire strangers to fatigue 
and danger." Yet " the people generally carried their 
packs, arms, and some utensils," with the cheerful spirit of 
the true pioneer. With Hooker as leader was Samuel 
Stone, his worthy associate pastor, or the " teacher " of the 
church. A fortnight was consumed in their toilsome jour- 
ney of more than a hundred miles. The way lay along the 
Indian trail " over mountains, through swamps and thick- 
ets," and across rivers " which were not passable save with 
great difficulty." 

This was the Old Connecticut Path, first made known 
to the Bay Colonists by Indians bringing corn from the 
Connecticut Valley to Boston. It was the same that the 
first pioneer, John Oldham, had travelled, that the Water- 
town band and the Dorchester company had followed. 
We can trace it to-day through populous cities and towns 
and rural villages. We may travel parts of it in the 
sumptuous drawing-room car over the smooth tracks of the 
modern raih'oad ; parts by trolley lines on highways and 
by-ways ; and the greater part by automobile, or in the 
more pleasurable carriage with the companionship of horses. 
Starting from Cambridge, it followed the northerly bank 
of the Charles River to the centre of Waltham ; thence 
passed through Weston to South Framingham ; thence ran 
southwesterly to Hopkinton ; then westerly to Grafton ; 
southerly to Dudley ; across the Connecticut state line to 
Woodstock, and so on, southwesterly, through the wilder- 
ness where now are clusters of Connecticut towns, to the 
River's east bank opposite Hartford. It is not to be con- 
founded with the historic Bay Path, or with the second 



36 Connecticut River 

Connecticut Trail. The latter was found some years later. 
Winthrop notes it in his Journal in 1648 as avoiding much 
of the hill way. It was an upper trail lying all in Massa- 
chusetts. Starting from Cambridge or Watertown by the 
Charles River, it left the Old Connecticut Path at Weston, 
and ran through Sudbury Centre and Stowe to Lancaster, 
thence through Princeton, the south part of Barre and the 
north part of New Braintree to West Brookfield, and thence 
throvTgh Warren and Brimfield to Springfield, — traversed 
now in small parts by the Massachusetts Central, the old 
Boston and Fitchburg, and the Boston and Albany Rail- 
roads, as a good railroad map of Massachusetts will show. 
This trail came early to be called the Bay Path. But the 
colonial highway thus officially designated was not marked 
out till a quarter of a centm-y afterward — in 1673. It 
began at Watei-town and ran through South Framingham, 
Marlborough, and Lancaster to Brookfield, where it struck 
the old trail to Springfield. Three years before the elder 
Winthrop makes note of the second Connecticut Trail, 
Winthrop the younger had travelled most of the course of 
the Bay Path beyond Sudbury. His was a winter's journey 
in 1645 from Boston to Springfield, Hartford, Saybrook 
and New London, and he was accompanied only by a ser- 
vant. 

The Hookerites, planting themselves close by the Dutch 
fort where the first comers from Cambridge were settled, 
began Hartford, calling it at first Newtown. A month 
before their arrival William Pynchon, founder of the Mas- 
sachusetts Roxbury, coming overland with eight compan- 
ions, had occupied the " Agawam meadows " farther up 
the River, and begim Springfield, the first east-side settle- 
ment. 



The Pioneer River Settlements 37 

Now, or by the close of 1636, the English plantations 
on the fertile River banks numbered five (if the Plymouth 
Trading House and the Saybrook military seat may be 
counted), and embraced an English population approaching 
a thousand in number. The Dutch were a small com- 
munity, narrowed to their " House of Hope " and the 
" bouwerie " about it. In scarcely more than two years 
three of the settlements from the Bay Colony — Hartford, 
Windsor, and Wethersfield, — had seceded from Massachu- 
setts, and had established the first genuine democracy in 
America. 



lY 

A Significant Chapter of Colonial History. 

The Political Motive that Inspired the dispersion from the Bay Colony to the 
Valley — Democracy versus Theocracy — Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, 
Spokesmen for the Differing Parties — The Hookerites' Petition in the Bay 
General Court — Wiuthrop's Report of the Unrecorded Proceedings — Al- 
leged and Real Reasons for Removal ^ Provisional Government for the 
Valley Plantations — The Independent Establishment — Hooker's epoch- 
making Sermon — The first Written Constitution — " True Birth of Amer- 
ican Democracy " — Hooker's Illuminating Letter : a Colonial Classic. 

THE story of the remarkable dispersion from the infant 
Bay Colony to the Connecticut Valley, with its causes 
and consequences, has come to be recognized as one of the 
most significant chapters of the formative period of Ameri- 
can history. John Fiske counted the secession of the three 
Connecticut River towns an event "no less memorable than 
the voyage of the ' Mayflower,' or the arrival of Wiuthrop's 
great colony in Massachusetts Bay." 

The story has been variously told, the versions varying 
according to the narrator's point of view. Fiske restates 
with cleanest cut directness the controlling motive, above 
the commercial one, that inspired the immigration. This 
motive arose from a desire of the minority party in the 
Bay Colony to secularize and broaden the political power 
of the community, which power the majority or theocratic 
party would have the monopoly of the few. The commer- 
cial aims of the chief founders of the Bay Colony were but 
"a cloak to cover the purpose they had most at heart." 
Says Fiske : 

38 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 39 

" Their purpose was to found a theocratic commonwealth, like 
that of the children of Israel in the good old days before their fro- 
ward hearts conceived the desire for a king. There was no thought 
of throwing off allegiance to the British crown ; but saving such alle- 
giance, their purpose was to build up a theocratic society according 
to their own notions. ... In the theocratic state which these leaders 
were attempting to found, one of the corner-stones, perhaps the 
chiefest corner-stone, was the restriction of the right of voting and 
holding civil office to members of the Congregational Church qualified 
for participation in the Lord's Supper. The ruling party in Massa- 
chusetts Bay believed that this restriction was necessary in order to 
guard against hidden foes and to assure sufficient power to the 
clergy ; but there were some who felt that the restriction would give 
to the clergy more power than was likely to be wisely used, and that 
its tendency was strictly aristocratic. The minority which held 
these democratic views was more strongly represented in Dorchester, 
Watertown, and the New Towne than elsewhere. Here, too, the 
jealousy of encroachments upon local self-government was especially 
strong. ... It is also a significant fact that in 1633 Watertown and 
Dorchester led the way in instituting town government by selectmen." 

Thomas Hooker, that " rich pearl which Europe gave 
to America," and John Cotton, " the father and glory of 
Boston," perhaps, as Fiske says, the two most powerful 
intellects to be found in Massachusetts Bay, became the 
chief spokesmen for these differing parties. 

They came out to America on the same ship. Hooker, 
slipping off from Holland and avoiding the watchmen of 
the English High Court of Commission who would stop 
him, boarded the vessel at the Downs. Perhaps their dis- 
cussion of the great principles of government began diu'ing 
the long summer voyage of seven weeks. Such philosophic 
debates may have constituted their sober pastime, in the 
intervals between sermons or expositions, — three a day, 
morning, afternoon, and in the twilight after supper, — 
with which they and the other minister aboard, Samuel 



40 Connecticut Kiver 

Stone, Hooker's associate, beguiled the two hundred pas- 
"sengers. Maybe John Iia3Ties, a conspicuous figure among 
the company, soon to become governor of the Bay Colony, 
then of Connecticut, may have had part in these discus- 
sions. The ship was the " Griffin," that " noble vessel of 
three hundred tons burthen," the arrival of which at Boston 
in September, 1G33, with this " glorious triumvirate of 
ministers," and the choicest freight of emigrants since the 
coming of Winthrop's fleet, so cheered the colonists here, 
and " made them to say," as Cotton Mather, the erudite 
punster, put it in his " Magnolia," that " the God of 
Heaven had supplied them with what would in some 
sort answer theu" three great necessities, Cotton for their 
Clothing, Hooker for their Fishing, and Stone for their 
Building." 

Perhaps Hooker thus early in the controversy intimated 
his conviction, which afterward at Hartford he so tersely 
expressed in that memorable phrase, " the foundation of 
authority is laid firstly in the free consent of the people." 
And Cotton may have advanced his thesis, later laid down 
in his letter of 1636 to Lord Say and Sele, " Democracy I 
do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit govern- 
ment either for church or commonwealth. If the people 
be governors, who shall be the governed ? " However this 
may be, these great minds were marshalled against each 
other in the contentions which after their landing almost 
immediately arose. But it was most decorously conducted. 
It was a gentlemanly contest, not a wrangle between poli- 
ticians for ignoble ends. Both were animated by the lof- 
tiest motives. It is a sorry mistake to assiune that there 
was rivalry between them. Their souls soared above all 
rivabies. The presumption that Hooker coveted the pas- 
torate of the Boston church which went to Cotton is far 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 41 

from the mark. His congregation was already here before 
him, awaiting his coming at Cambridge, or " New Towne." 
When he landed from the " Griffin " they " crowded about 
him with their welcome," and " with open arms he em- 
braced them," answering, " now I live if ye stand fast in 
the Lord." 

Hooker and Stone had been settled with their congre- 
gation at " New Towne " a few months before the agitation 
for removal was begun. It took on at first a plea for more 
room for farms. In the spring of 1634 the New Towne 
folk were complaining of " straitness," especially for want 
of meadow. In May the General Court granted them leave 
to seek out a new place and promised to confirm it to them, 
provided their choice were not prejudicial to a plantation 
already established. Then men were sent out by them to 
view various sites in regions not remote from Boston. But 
it was soon apparent that their eyes were fixed on the 
banks of the distant Connecticut, not surely within the 
bounds of the Massachusetts patent. In July they des- 
patched a party of six on Governor Winthrop's " Blessing 
of the Bay," bound for Manhattan, their avowed object 
being " to discover Connecticut River, intending to remove 
their town thither." In September their petition for leave 
to make this removal was before the General Court at a 
sitting in New Towne. 

There is no mention of this matter in the Court records, 
notwithstanding that it was the main business of the sitting 
and occupied several days in debate ; that it occasioned an 
adjournment of the court for " a day of humiliation, to seek 
the Lord," the assistants and deputies being divided on the 
vote, the magistrates opposing, and the deputies favoring 
and refusing to yield to the magistrates ; that it inspired a 
great sermon from John Cotton for the magistrates' side at 



42 Connecticut River 

the reopening of the sitting ; and that it resulted finally in 
the submission of the deputies, and the apparent acquies- 
cence of the Hookerites in the decision against them. 
Fortimately Wiuthrop's invaluable Journal supplies the 
Court reporter's omission with a succinct account of the 
proceedings, in which between the lines we read the real 
motives of the petitioners, and the recognition of them by 
the magistrates. Many reasons were alleged pro and con : 

" The principal reasons for this removal were : (1) Their want of 
accommodation for their cattle, so as they were not able to maintain 
their ministers, nor could receive any more of their friends to help 
them ; and here it was alleged by Mr. Hooker as a f imdamental error 
that towns were set so near to each other. (2) The fniitfulness and 
commodiousness of Connecticut and the danger of having it possessed 
by others, Dutch or English. (3) The strong bent of their spirits to 
remove thither. 

" Against these it was said : (1) That in point of conscience they 
ought not to depart from us being knit to us in one body and bound 
by oath to seek the welfare of the commonwealth. (2) That in point 
of state and civil pohcy we ought not to give them leave to depart, 
— 1, being we were now weak and in danger to be assailed ; 2, the 
departure of Mr. Hooker would not only draw many from us, but 
also divert other friends that would come to us ; 3, we should ex- 
pose them to evident peril both from the Dutch (who made claim to 
the same river and had already built a fort there), and from the In- 
dians, and also from our own state at home who could not endure 
they should sit down without a patent in any place which our King 
lays claim imto. (3) They might be accommodated at home by some 
enlargement which other towns offered. They might remove to 
Merrimack or any other place within our patent. (4) The removing 
of a candlestick is a great judgment which is to be avoided. 

" Upon these and other arguments, the court being divided, it 
was put to vote : and of the deputies, fifteen were for their departure 
and ten against it. The governor and two assistants were for it, and 
the deputy [governor] and all the rest of the assistants were against 
it (except the secretary who gave no vote), whereupon no recoi'd was 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 43 

entered, because there were not six assistants in the vote, as the 
patent requires. Upon this grew a great difference between the gov- 
ernor and assistants, and the deputies. They would not yield the 
assistants a negative voice, and the others (considering how dangerous 
it might be to the commonwealth if they should not keep their 
strength to balance the greater number of the deputies) thought it 
safe to stand upon it. 

" So when they could proceed no farther, the whole court agreed 
to keep a day of humiliation to seek the Lord, which accordingly 
was done, in all the congregations, the 18th day of this month ; and 
the 24th the court again met. Before they began Mr. Cotton 
preached (being desired by all the court upon Mr. Hooker's instant 
excuse of his unfitness for that occasion). He took his text out of 
Hag. ii, 4 etc., out of which he] laid down the nature and strength 
(as he termed it) of the magistracy, ministry, and people, viz. — the 
strength of the magistracy to be their authority ; of the people, their 
liberty ; and of the ministry, their purity ; and showed how all of these 
had a negative voice etc., and that yet the ultimate resolution etc. 
ought to be in the whole body of the people etc. with answer to all 
objections, and a declaration of the people's duty and right to main- 
tain their true hberties against any unjust violence etc., which gave 
great satisfaction to the company. 

" And it pleased the Lord so to assist him, and to bless his own 
ordinance, that the affairs of the court went on cheerfully ; and al- 
though all were not satisfied about the negative voice to be left to 
the magistrates, yet no man moved aught about it, and the congre- 
gation of New Towne came and accepted of such enlargement as had 
formerly been offered them by Boston and Waltham ; and so the 
fear of their removal to Connecticut was removed." 

The governor this year was Thomas Dudley, Winthrop 
serving as assistant in company with Hooker's friend, John 
Haynes, William Pynchon of Roxbury, and the younger 
John Winthrop. Simon Bradstreet was the secretary, who 
withheld his vote. These constituted the magistrates. 
Haynes and Pynchon were presumably the two assistants 
who voted with the governor for the petition. Ludlow, 



44 Connecticut River 

the deputy governor, is supposed to have led the opposing 
vote of the magistrates. 

Over the reasons alleged for removal in place of the 
weighty ones held back, John Fiske makes merry. The 
men who put forward the plea that they hadn't room 
enough to pasture their cattle, "must have had to hold 
their sides to keep from bursting with laughter!" he ex- 
claims. " Not room enough in Cambridge for five hundred 
people to feed their cattle ! Why then did they not simply 
send a swarm into the adjacent territory — into what was 
by and by to be parcelled out as Lexington and Concord 
and Acton ? Why flit a hundred miles through the wil- 
derness and seek an isolated position open to attack from 
every quarter? " 

The expression of the " strong bent of their spirits to 
move thither," with their practical appreciation of the 
" fruitfulness and the commodiousness " of the River coun- 
try, more nearly than the other pretexts voiced the real 
reasons. 

By the following summer (1635) the aspect of affairs 
had changed, and it soon had to be acknowledged that the 
Connecticut move was inevitable, although the light-giving 
" candlestick " had not yet joined the exodus. At the 
May election, also held at New Towne, John Haynes of the 
secular party was chosen governor, with the two Winthrops, 
Dudley, Pynchon, and Bradstreet among the assistants. 
Immediately, at the same sitting of the General Coiui, 
orders were adopted granting liberty to the inhabitants of 
Roxbm-y and Watertown to remove themselves '' to any 
place they shall think meet," not prejudicial to any existing 
plantation ; with the proviso, however, that they continue 
stiU under the Bay government. At the next sitting, in 
June, similar leave was granted to the Dorchester folk. 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 45 

Roger Ludlow had now become as ardent for removal as 
he had been against it, and he headed the Dorchester emi- 
gration, as we have seen. His abrupt change of attitude 
was brought about, it is assumed, through his loss of the 
governorship in the May election, to which as deputy he 
was in the direct line. Fi'om this moment he was a power- 
ful Connecticut leader, and became a foremost figure in the 
infant colony on the River banks. 

With the order giving the Dorchester people leave to 
go cognizance was taken of the Massachusetts jmisdiction 
over the River country. This appears in a grant of three 
pieces (cannon) to the communities removing " to fortify 
themselves withal." 

At the court's September sitting the first step for gov- 
ernment on the River was taken through an order empower- 
ing any Bay magistrate to swear a constable for any River 
plantation. At the same time further provision for defence 
was made. It was ordered that two drakes and powder 
and shot be loaned the settlers from the stock of the towns 
from which the emigration was making. Finally, in the 
following March (16-36) the court provided a provisional 
government for the plantations. 

This was a government by commission ; the commis- 
sioners named to "govern the people of Connecticut for 
the space of a year now next coming." In the "exempli- 
fication " of this instrument we see how intimately the Bay 
men associated themselves in the business with the Lords 
and Gentlemen, and endeavored to guard their assumed 
interests in the River : 

" Whereas, upon some reason and grounds there are to remove 
from this our commonwealth and body of the Massachusetts in 
America, divers of our loving friends, neighbours, freemen, and mem- 
bers of New Towne, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places, who 



40 Connecticut River 

are resolved to transplant themselves and their estates unto the 
River of Connecticut, there to reside and inhabit, and to this end 
divers are there already, and divers others shortly to go, we, in this 
present Court assembled, on the behalf of our said members, and 
John Winthrop Jun.r Esq.r, Governor, appointed by certain noble 
personages and men of quality interested in the said river, which 
[sic] are yet in England, on their behalf, have had a serious consid- 
eration there[on], and think it meet that where there are a people to 
sit down and cohabit there will follow, upon occasion, some cause of 
difference, as also divers misdemeanors, which will require a speedy 
address ; and in regard of the distance of the place this state and gov- 
ernment cannot take notice of the same as to apply timely remedy, or 
to dispense equal justice to them and their affairs as may be desired ; 
and in regard the said noble personages and men of quality have some- 
thing engaged themselves and their estates in the planting of the 
said river, and by virtue of a patent do require jurisdiction of the 
said place and people, and neither the minds of the said personages 
(they being sent unto) are as yet known, nor any manner of govern- 
ment is yet agreed on, and there being a necessity, as aforesaid, that 
some present government may be oVtserved, we therefore think meet, 
and so order, that Roger Ludlowe Esq., William Pynchon Esqr, 
John Steele, William Swaine, Henry Smyth, William Phe[lpe8], 
William Westwood, and Andrew Ward, or the greater part of them, 
shall have full power and authority " to act in such capacity. 

If within the year a " mutual and settled " government 
were formed the commission was to be recalled. But such 
government must be " condescended into by and with the 
good liking and consent of the said noble personages or 
their agent," as well as the Bay Colony, without prejudice 
to the interest of the Lords and Gentlemen " in the said 
river and confines thereof within their several limits." 
Three of the eight commissioners, Steele, Westwood, and 
Ward, were New Newtown (Hartford) men ; Ludlow and 
Phelps were New Dorchester (Windsor) men ; Swayne and 
Smyth were of the New Watertown (Wethersfield) ; and 
Pynchon alone stood for Agawam (Springfield). All of 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 47 

the eight were men of consequence. Ward of Hartford 
was an ancestor of Aaron Burr, and from him Henry Ward 
Beecher got his middle name. 

With a provisional government thus arranged by Mas- 
sachusetts the Hookerites at length prepared for their de- 
partiu'e. No reversal of the negative vote of the magis- 
trates on their petition of September, 1634, appears to have 
been made. Nor is there record of any further action at 
a subsequent General Coiu-t. Probably, as historians have 
observed, the liberty given in general terms in the order of 
May, 1634, was held to be sufficient. Perhaps the majority 
of the magistrates now sitting were more friendly than the 
previous body to the move, but were shy of a vote of rec- 
ord, deeming exclusion from the court minutes of reference 
to dispersions most prudent, as in the former case of 
the great debate and negative action. At all events the 
Hookerites moved away tranquilly, and at peace with the 
Bay leaders. Haynes did not go at this time, but followed 
shortly, after he had cleared the way for his successor in 
the Bay governorship, young Sir Harry Vane. 

Whether Hooker and Haynes and the others in their 
confidence contemplated from the start the setting up of a 
government of their own, is purely a matter of speculation. 
If they did they kept their hopes to themselves while they 
were getting their new house in order. 

The provisional government continued serenely through 
its year, affairs moving without jar. Six public courts 
convened within the term. All of them were held in the 
plantations on the west side of the River, although Agawam 
was within the fold. Foiu- met at Newtown, and one each 
at New Dorchester and New Watertown. Pynchon was 
present at only one of the six. Ludlow was a master- 



48 Connecticut River 

spirit at all. At the last sitting, in Newtown, February 
27, 1637, the present names of the west-side settlements 
were adopted, — " Hateford Town " for Newtown, " Wy- 
thersfeild" for Watertown, and "Windsor" for Dorchester. 
In this action some writers see the first step toward with- 
drawal from the Bay jurisdiction. Hartford was named 
for the English Hertford, in compliment, some say, to 
Samuel Stone, the minister with Hooker, whose birthplace 
it was ; others say to Haynes, whose ancestors were of 
Hertfordshire. Wethersfield was called after the town in 
old Essex from the neighborhood of which came John Tal- 
cott, a first proprietor and leader in the new settlement. 
Windsor was obviously suggested by the home of the Eng- 
lish sovereigns. 

The transition to the independent government was 
without friction. In its earlier stages it was a sort of natiu-al 
evolution. The commissioners constituting the old order 
passed into the new. Five of them, with a single new 
member, composed the first covu-t held after the expiration 
of the Massachusetts commission. This sat at Newtown 
(Hartford), March 28, 1637. The new member was Thomas 
Welles of Newtown, said by tradition to have been the 
private secretary of Lord Say and Sele before coming out 
to America. Twenty years later he was a governor of 
Connecticut. Welles took the place of William Westwood 
in the court, but how he was chosen does not appear. The 
next court was by its composition a definite step nearer 
independent government, and was distinctly a representa- 
tive body. It was a General Court, in which the commis- 
sioners composing the previous court sat with deputies, or 
committees, as they were termed, elected by the freemen 
in each plantation. Although organized primarily to meet 
an emergency, — arising from the hostility of the Pequots, 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial Historj'' 49 

— it fixed itself as a permanent institution in the adoption 
of this order at the finish of its business : " the General 
Coxui; now in being shall be dissolved, and there is no more 
attendance of the members thereof to be expected except 
they be chosen in the next Genei'al Court." It convened 
at Newtown on the first day of May, 1637, and continued 
in existence till February 9, 1637-8. It declared offensive 
war against the Pequots, and prepared for the campaign. 
It levied men for the service from the plantations, provided 
for provisioning them, impressed Mr. Pynchon's shallop for 
" the design," and saw the grim business through. Two 
months after its adjournment, or on April 5, 1638, a new 
General Court, similarly constituted, came in, the towns 
electing their committees in the interim. In this General 
Coiu-t Agawam was represented the same as the other 
plantations. But its magistrates and committee men, Mr. 
Pynchon and three others, attended only the first sitting ; 
withdrawing, perhaps, upon the censure of Mr. Pynchon in 
connection with a corn contract. This was conveyed in an 
order imposing upon him a fine of " forty bushels of corn 
for the public," for failing to be " so careful to promote the 
public good in the trade of corn as he was bound to do," 
in carrying out a contract to supply the west side towns 
with this commodity. 

The plan of government was now maturing, and this 
courti is supposed to have been entrusted with the framing 
of it. At an adjourned session on the last day of May, Mr. 
Hooker prepared the way in his epoch-making sermon be- 
fore the body. This was the discourse in which he enim- 
ciated the fundamentals that should be embodied in the 
Constitution, grounded on his explicit declaration that "the 
choice of public magistrates belongs to the people of God's 
o^vn allowance," because " the foundation of authority is 



50 Connecticut River 

laid firstly in the consent of the people." Only the heads 
of this discourse are extant, but these sufficiently disclose 
its import. They are preserved in a shorthand abstract in 
a manuscript note-book of Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Wiudsoi', 
now in the lil^rary of the Connecticut Historical Society, 
for the successful deciphering of which history is indebted 
to J. Hammond Trumbull. 

Seven months after the May sitting the first of all 
written constitutions of representative government was 
completed. Then, on the fomieenth of January, 1638-9, 
deputies from the towns, assembled in convention at Hart- 
ford, adopted the instrument as the " Fundamental Orders 
of Connecticut." This remarkable early seventeenth cen- 
tury paper, the joint work presumably of Hooker, Haynes, 
and Ludlow, fashioned, it is pleasant to imagine, in 
Hooker's Hartford study overlooking our River, stands 
imique among American documents in being not only the 
" first written constitution known to history that created 
a government," but the precedent for the Constitution of 
the United States a centm-y and a half after. It made no 
allusion to any som'ce of authority whatever except the 
towns themselves. It was silent as to any duty to the 
British or any other crown. As John Fiske fm-ther em- 
phasises, it " created a state which was really a tiny federal 
republic, and it recognized the principle of federal equality 
by equality of representation among the towns, while at 
the same time it recognized popular sovereignty by electing 
its governor and its upper house by a phu'ality vote, and it 
conferred upon the General Court only such powers as were 
expressly granted." It gave the suffi-age without ecclesi- 
astical restrictions, to all the freemen admitted to the towns 
who had taken the oath of fidelity. The requisite for free- 
manship was simply a majority vote for admittance, by the 













a 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 51 

inhabitants of the town in town meeting. Surely, as Fiske 
exclaims, and with pride as a Connecticut River man, for 
he was bom at Hartford, " surely this was the true birth 
of American democracy and the Connecticut Valley was 
its birthplace ! " 

On the second Thursday of April following this mo- 
mentous birth the freemen of the three west-side River 
towns again convened at Hartford, at a general meeting, 
and completed their establishment with the election of their 
chief magistrates. Hooker again preached, delivering the 
initial Connecticut " Election Sermon." With John Haynes 
as governor were chosen six others " to assist in the mag- 
istracy." Of the six, Roger Ludlow was chosen deputy 
governor, Edward Hopkins secretary, and Thomas Welles 
treasurer. The others were George Wyllys, John Webster, 
and William Phelps. All were foremost men in the three 
communities. Each, with the exception of Ludlow and 
Phelps, occupied the governorship in after years. Ludlow 
and Phelps had served continuously from the establishment 
of the provisional government. The magistrates consti- 
tuted the upper house of the General Court. 

The secession of the three River towns was now fully 
established. Agawam had withdrawn from the alliance 
and had set up a provisional government of her own. A 
month after the establishment of the Connecticut Consti- 
tution her inhabitants entered into a compact with the 
proviso that " by God's good providence " they found 
themselves " fallen into the line of the Massachusetts ju- 
risdiction," making Pynchon their sole magistrate. The 
Hartford government, however, continued jurisdiction over 
the plantation, and this, with other proceedings, gave rise 
to a sharp correspondence between the Bay and the River 



52 Connecticut River 

leaders. The Bay men had at first been willing that 
Agawam " should have fallen into the Connecticut govern- 
ment"; but having come into conflict vs^ith the River men 
over the articles for the proposed confederation of the col- 
onies, and the River men holding fast to their amendments, 
the Bay men resolved to " stand upon " their rights and 
keep Agawam in their jurisdiction. It seems to have been 
admitted that Agawam lay within the vaguely defined 
western bound of the Massachusetts patent. But the Con- 
necticut men justified their course on the action of Agawam 
in participating in the general election of the spring of 
1638. At that election " the committees from the town of 
Agawam came in with other towns and chose their magis- 
trates, installed them into their government, took oath of 
them for the execution of justice according to God, and 
engaged themselves to submit to this government, and the 
execution of justice by their means, and dispensed by the 
authority which they put upon them by choice. ... If Mr. 
Pynchon can devise ways to make his oath bind him when 
he will, and loose him when he list ; if he can tell how, in 
faithfulness, to engage himself in a civil covenant and 
combination (for that he did by his committees by his act), 
and yet can cast it away at his pleasure, before he give in 
sufficient warrant more than his own word and will, he 
must find a law in Agawam for it ; for it is written in no 
law or gospel that ever I read." 

Thus wrote Thomas Hooker in that illuminating letter 
to John Winthrop, senior, in the autumn of 1638, which 
lay in the archives of Massachusetts imopened and unknown 
to the historians till its discovery by Dr. Trumbull less than 
half a century ago, — the most valuable of the several im- 
portant " finds " of this foremcst of Connecticut historical 
scholars, which have made necessary the rewriting of more 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 53 

than one passage of oui' colonial history. It is luminous, 
especially in the revelation it makes upon another signifi- 
cant matter, — the attitude at the time that Hooker wrote 
of some of the Bay partisans, — " multitudes " of them is 
his term, — toward the Connecticut establishment, and 
their persistent efforts to check emigration to the River 
towns. Withal in vitality of expression it is a colonial 
classic, as witness these extracts : 

I confess that my head grows gray and my eyes dim, yet I am 
sometimes in the watch-tower ; and if the qua're be, Watchman, 
what is the night, as the prophet speaks, I shall tell you what I have 
observed, and shall be bold to leave my complaints in yoiir bosom, of 
what is beyond question. . . . What I shall write are not forged imag- 
inations and suppositions carved out of men's conceits, but that which 
is reported and cried openly and carried by sea and land. Secondly, 
my aim is not at any person, nor intendment to charge any particu- 
lar with you ; because it is the common trade that is driven among 
multitudes with you, and with which the heads and hearts of passen- 
gers come loaded hither, and that with grief and wonderment ; and 
the conclusion which is arrived at from these reproaches and prac- 
tices is this, that we are a forlorn people, not worthy to be succored 
with company and so neither with support. 

I will particularize. If enquire be. What be the people of 
Connecticut ? the reply is, Alas, poor rash-headed creatures, they 
rushed themselves into a war with the heathen [the Pequot War of 
1637], and so had we not rescued them at so many himdred charges, 
they had been utterly undone. In all which you know there is not 
a true sentence ; for we did not rush into the war ; and the Lord 
himself did rescue before friends. 

If after much search made for the settling of the people and 
nothing suitable found to their desires but toward Connecticut ; if 
yet then they will needs go from the Bay, go any whither, be any 
where, choose any place, any patent — Narragansett, Plymouth, — 
only go not to Connecticut. We hear and bear. 

Immediately after the winter, because there was likelihood 
multitudes woidd come over, and lest any should desire to come 
hither, then there is a lamentable cry raised, that all their cows at 



54 Connecticut River 

Connecticut are dead, and that I had lost nine and only one left and 
that was not likely to live (when I never had but eight and they 
never did better than last year). We hear still and bear. 

And lest haply some men should be encouraged to come be- 
cause of any subsistence and continuance here, then the rumour is 
noised that I am weary of my station ; or if I did know whither 
to go, or my people what way to take, we would never abide : where- 
as such impudent forgery is scant found in hell ; for I profess I know 
not a member of my congregation but sits down well apayd with his 
portion, and for myself, I have said what now I write : if I was to 
choose I would be where I am. 

But notwithstanding all this the matter is not sure, and there 
is some fear that some men will come toward Connecticut when 
ships come over ; either some have related the nature of the place or 
some friends invited them ; and therefore care must be taken, and is 
by this generation, as soon as any ship arrives, that persons haste 
presently to board them, and when no occasion is offered or question 
propounded for Connecticut, then their pity to their countrymen is 
such that they cannot but speak the truth : Alas, do you think to go 
to Connecticut ? Why do you long to be undone ? If you do not, 
bless j'ourself from thence ; their upland will bear no corn, their 
meadows nothing but weeds, and the people are almost all starved. 
Sill we hear and bear. 

But may be these sudden expressions will be taken as words of 
course, and therefore vanish away when once spoken. Let it there- 
fore be provided that the innkeepers entertain their guests with in- 
vectives against Connecticut, and those are set on with the salt, and 
go off with the voyder. If any hear and stay, then they are wel- 
comed ; but if these reports cannot stop a man's proceeding from 
making trial, they look at him as a Turk, or as a man scant worthy 
to live. Still we hear and bear. 



That's in New England : but send over a watch a little into 
Old England ; and go we there to the Exchange, the very like trade 
is driven \>y persons which come from you, as though there was a 
resolved correspondence held in this particular ; as the master and 
merchant who came this last year to Seabrook Fort related, even 
to my amazement, there is a tongue-battle fought upon the Exchange 



A Significant Chapter of Colonial History 55 

by all the plots that can be forged to keep passengers from coming, 
or to hinder any from sending a vessel to Connecticut, as proclaimed 
an utter impossibility. 

Sir, he wants a nostril that feels not and scents not a schismat- 
ical spirit in such a fi-amer of falsifying relations to gratify some 
persons, and satisfy their own ends. Do these things argue brotherly 
love ? Do these issue from spirits that either pity the necessities of 
their brethren, or would that the work of God should prosper in 
their hands? or rather argue the quite contrary. If these be the 
ways of God, or that the blessing of God do follow them, I never 
preached God's ways nor knew what belonged to them. . . . 
Worthy Sir, these are not jealousies which we needlessly raise ; 
they are realities which passengers daily relate, we hear and bear ; 
and I leave them in your bosom ; only I confess I count it my dutj-, 
and I do privately and publicly pray against such wickedness; and 
the Lord hath wont to hear the prayer of the despised. 

In time the relations between the two colonies became 
more amicalale, and differences were settled without rancor. 
The territory of Agawam was at length formally confirmed 
as within the Bay patent, and she took her place as a 
Massachusetts town. She had become Springfield in 1641, 
taking the name of the English town from which Pynchon 
came. The New England Confederacy became successfully 
established in 1643. Hooker and Winthrop, notwithstand- 
ing their sharp correspondence, remained steadfastly stanch 
friends. And when in 1647 Hooker died at his Hartford 
home, Winthrop wrote of him : " . . . who for piety, pru- 
dence, wisdom, zeal, learning, and what else might make 
him serviceable in the place and time he lived in, might 
be compared with men of greatest note ; and he shall need 
no other praise : the fruits of his labours in both Englands 
shall preserve an honourable and happy remembrance of 
him forever." 



The Fall of the House of Hope 

Troubled Life of the Butch among their English Neighbors — Petty Aggres- 
sions on Both Sides — De Vries's Observations in 1639 — His Dinner-table 
Talk with Governor Hay nes — A Pleasant Episode of his Visit — Comman- 
der Provoost's Strenuous Five Years — A Dramatic Scene at the Fort — 
Diplomatic Gysbert op Dyck — Peter Stuyvesant at Hartford — The Hart- 
ford Treaty of 1650 — A brief " Happy Peace " — Captain John Underbill 
upon the Scene — He seizes the House of Hope — End of Dutch Occupation. 

TO the post of the House of Hope the Dutch clung for 
fifteen years after the establishment of the Connecti- 
cut colony. They were in almost constant broils with 
their English neighbors. Their domain was repeatedly 
encroached upon ; their field-hands were harassed ; then- 
tempers ruffled by all sorts of petty annoyances : the object 
of all apparently being to drive them from the Valley. 
They retaliated from time to time, giving the English in 
their turn just cause for complaint, and they protested and 
threatened much. Yet they held back from open war- 
fare, restrained, perhaps, by reason of their Aveakness, for 
they remained a small and feeble body in an aggressive 
community, and were backed by the New Netherland 
government only by words in lieu of men. 

The English aggressions became most pronounced im- 
mediately upon the setting up of the new colony. In 
June of 1639, only two months after the first inaugura- 
tion, the worthy David Pieterzen de Vries, master of artil- 
lery in the service of Holland, and an industrious planter 
of colonies, visited the fort, cominsr in hi.s A-acht on a sum- 

56 



The Fall of the House of Hope 57 

mer cruise from New Amsterdam, and found the commis- 
sary thus early warm over the situation. The garrison 
then consisted of only fourteen or fifteen soldiers with the 
commissary, Gysbert op Dyck. Hartford town was seen 
to be well started within the Dutch domain, in spite of 
Op Dyck's protest, and had already " a fine church and 
over a hundred houses." Some of the English had begim 
to plow up the reserved lands about the redoubt in defiance 
of the Dutch soldiers, and when the latter attempted to 
interfere had " cudgelled " them. Appealed to by Op Dyck, 
De Vries went into the town, and presented himseK to 
Governor Haynes. He was graciously received and invited 
to dinner at the governor's house. At the table the con- 
versation tiu-ned upon the Dutch grievances. " I told 
him," De Vries narrates in his journal, " that it was wrong 
to take by force the company's land which it had bought 
and paid for. He answered that the lands were lying 
idle ; that though we had been there many years we had 
done scarcely anything ; that it was a sin to let such rich 
land which produced such fine corn lie imcultivated ; and 
that they had already built tkree towns upon this River 
in a fine country." Whether these arguments satisfied 
De Vries does not appear; but here the record ends, and 
Op Dyck's tribulations continued as before. 

In his narrative of this visit, which lasted nearly a 
week, De Vries gives us a sketch of the situation of the 
House of Hope as it then appeared ; and he relates an 
anecdote which illustrates the life of the young River 
town, his own cleverness in diplomacy, and the tender- 
heartedness of the colonial dames of that early day. 

The redoubt he describes as standing on a plain on the 
margin of the River, with a creek nmning alongside of it 
to a high woodland, " out of which comes a valley which 



58 Connecticut River 

makes this kill," where the town was built. The anec- 
dote runs in this wise : 

Among the incidents which happened while I was here was 
that of an English ketch arriving here from the north with thirty- 
pipes of Canary wine. There was a merchant with it, who was 
from the same city, in England, as the servant of the minister of 
this town, and was well acquainted with him. Now this merchant 
invited the minister's servant on l)oard the vessel to drink with 
him ; and it seems that the man became fuddled with wine, or drank 
pretty freely, which was observed by the minister. So they brought 
the servant to the church, where the post stood, in order to whip 
him. The merchant then came to me and requested me to speak 
to the minister, as it was my fault that he had given wine to his 
countryman. 

I accordingly went to the commander of our little fort, or 
redoubt, and invited the minister and the mayor [? governor], and 
other leading men with their wives, who were very fond of eating 
cherries; as there were from forty- to fifty cherry-trees standing 
about the redoubt, full of cherries, we feasted the minister and 
the governor, and their wives also came to us ; and as we were 
seated at the meal in the redoubt, I together with the merchant, 
requested the minister to pardon his servant, saying that he probably 
had not paiiaken of any wine for a year, and that such sweet Canary 
wine would intoxicate any man. We were a long time before we 
could persuade him ; but their wives spoke favorably, whereby the 
servant got free. 

De Vries observed that the Hartford folk lived soberly 
as a rule. They " drink only three times at a meal, and 
whoever drinks himself drank they tie to a post and whip 
him, as they do thieves in Holland." 

Gysbert op Dyck resigned his charge in October, 1640, 
" disgusted with a post where he was so constantly in- 
sidted." The English had now openly denied the right of 
the Dutch to any land about the fort. " Show your right, 
and we are ready to exhibit ours." So Governor Hopkins, 



The Fall of the House of Hope 59 

Haynes's successor, retorted to Op Dyck's reiterated plea 
of title through purchase prior to any English settlement 
here. The English right was now grounded also on pur- 
chase, with that of conquest added. In 1635 or 1636 
they had secured a deed from Sunckquasson, son of Sow- 
heag, the " chief Sequeen," alluded to in the Dutch 
claim as the " lord or right owner of the entire River and 
land thereabouts," who had assented to the Pequots' sale 
to Van Curler in 1633. Then- claim by conquest was 
through their crushing of the Pequots in 1638. To fortify 
their claim by purchase they had in July of 1640 obtained 
from Sunckquasson, or Sequasson, now chief of the tribe, 
a denial of the assent to the Pequot sale to Van Curler. 
Brought into the Hartford court, Sequasson had testified 
that " he never sold any ground to the Dutch, neither was 
at any time conquered by the Pequots, or paid tribute to 
them." In the following September the colony fm'ther 
procured from Uncas, since the Pequot overthrow the all- 
powerful Mohegan sagamore, '' a clear and ample deed of 
all his lands in Connecticut, except the lands which were 
then planted," the latter being reserved for himself and 
his people. Meanwhile collisions between the English and 
Dutch farmers repeatedly occurred, and blows were ex- 
changed. Complaints appear in the later records of many 
petty encounters, some of which provoke a smile as we 
peruse them, though grave enough they must have been 
to the sufferers. There was the case of one Evert Duyc- 
kink, a garrison man, who while sowing grain was struck 
" a hole in his head with a sticke, soe that the bloode ran 
downe very strongly, downe upon his body." Others were 
beaten off, lamed, with plow-staves. Ground which the 
Dutch had broken and made ready for seed, was seized in 
the night-time, and sown with corn by the quick-acting 



60 Connecticut River 

English, and thenceforward held by them. Standing peas 
were cut down and corn planted instead. They cut the 
ropes of a plow and threw it in the river. They blocked 
up the House of Hope with palisades on the land side. 
" Those of Hartford sold a hogg that belonged to the 
honoured companie under pretense that it had eaten of 
their grounde grass, when they had not any foot of inheri- 
tance." Kieft, — Irving's "William the Testy," — now 
the director of New Netherland, entered stout-worded pro- 
tests against the aggressive acts, but rendered Op Dyck 
no other aid. 

The next year (1641), however, when Jan Hendricksen 
Roesen had succeeded Op Dyck, Kieft roused himself to 
action. In Jime he arranged to send a force of fifty sol- 
diers and two sloops to fortify the fort, and "to prevent 
the repetition of such hostility as the English have wick- 
edly committed against our people, and maintain our 
rights and territory." Johannes La Montague, the Hugue- 
not physician, second to Kieft in the council of New 
Netherland, was put in charge of this expedition. But it 
never reached the River. " It pleased the Lord to dis- 
appoint their purpose," they being compelled to " keep 
their soldiers at home to defend themselves." So the 
elder Winthrop wrote down in his Journal. The occasion, 
far from providential to the Dutch, was a cruel rising of 
the Indians against De Vries's colony on Staten Island. 
Meanwhile counter complaints were made by the Hartford 
government of the "insolent behavior" of the men at the 
fort. They were charged with vending arms and ammu- 
nition to the Indians suspected of hostile intentions ; with 
giving " entertainment " to fugitives from justice ; with 
helping prisoners to "file off their irons" ; with assisting 
criminals m breaking goal; with persuading servants to 



The Fall of the House of Hope 61 

run from their masters and then sheltermg them ; with 
pm-chasing goods stolen from the English, and refusing to 
return them. By this time the domain about the fort had 
been contracted by the English to about thirty acres. 

In 1642 David Provoost came to the charge of the fort 
and held it through five stormy years. During this period 
the commissioners of the United Colonies took a hand in 
the controversy between the two contestants, and the mat- 
ter was carried across the sea for adjustment. But all 
failed of success, and the relations steadily grew more 
strained. In 1642 Kieft instituted new retaliatory meas- 
Lu-es, in issuing a prohibition of all trade and commercial 
intercourse with the Hartford folk in the neighborhood of 
the fort. Later on the colony proposed to buy out the 
Dutch company's interest in the contested land about the 
fort. The General Court sent delegates to New Nether- 
land to negotiate. Kieft, " after explaining in detail the 
antiquity of the Dutch title," declined to entertain their 
proposal. He offered, instead, a lease of the coveted 
Hartford field for an annual rent of a tenth part of the 
produce from it, so long as the English occupation should 
continue. The committee reported accordingly to the 
court, and there the matter ended. 

At length, in 1646, Provoost committed an act of 
defiance to the colonial authorities which led the commis- 
sioners of the United Colonies to address Kieft in formal 
complaint of the " strange and insufferable boldness " of 
the Dutch on the River. Provoost's performance was in- 
discreet, but dramatic, with a chivalrous air and the hauteur 
of a soldier baited by a petty police, which compels admi- 
ration. A captive Indian woman fleeing from her English 
master had found refuge in the fort, and the magistrates 
demanded her surrender. The demand being denied or 



62 Connecticut River 

ignored, the "watch of Hartford" were sent to enforce it. 
Provoost met them without the fort, and drawing his 
rapier broke it upon their weapons. Then turning his 
back upon them contemptuously, he strode off without a 
word, to his quarters. " Had he been slain in this proud 
affront," the commissioners exclaimed, "his blood had 
been upon his own head ! " Kieft's reply was an asser- 
tion that the Hartford people had deceived the commis- 
sioners with false accusations. The wrongs, he insisted, 
had been committed on their side. For them to complain 
of the Dutch at Fort Hope was " like Esop's Wolf com- 
plaining of the Lamb." As to the " barbarian handmaid " 
detained by them, " she was probably not a slave but a 
free woman, ' because she was neither taken in war nor 
bought with a price ' ; yet she should not be ' wrongfully 
detained.' " The commissioners answered expressing them- 
selves as " much unsatisfied " with Kieft's attitude. He 
could not prove his charge of deceit against the Hartford 
people, they wrote. Nor was his assiunption as to the 
status of the Indian maid true. She was a captive, taken 
in war ; and she had " fled from public justice, and was 
detained by the Dutch ' both from her master and the magis- 
trate.' " As " for yoin: other expressions, proverbs, or allu- 
sions," the letter closes with fine dignity, " we leave them 
to your better consideration." Thus the correspondence, 
conducted on both sides in sonorous Latin, ended, the 
honors with the English. For, as Brodhead, holding the 
brief for the Dutch, says, " while justice and equity ap- 
peared to be on the side of the Hollanders, the English 
negotiators showed themselves the better diplomatists, and 
the reckless Kieft only injured a good cause by intemper- 
ate zeal and undignified language." 

Upon the recall of " William the Testy " and the in- 



The Fall of the House of Hope 63 

coming of " Peter the Headstrong," Gysbert op Dyck was 
returned to the command of the fort. During the five 
years interim between his first service and his reappoint- 
ment he had been a member of Kieft's council at New 
Amsterdam, and, though the director's friend, had opposed 
his harsher methods and policy. A man of education and 
good parts, having withal some skill in diplomacy, he now 
established more agreeable relations with his neighbors. 
Dm'ing this second term, beginning in 1647, there was less 
of the friction that drove him to resign in disgust before. 
But the English pressure continued unabated. At length 
the Dutch limits on the River were definitely defined in 
the provisional " Hartford Treaty " of 1650, which resulted 
from the friendly meeting of Stuyvesant with the council 
of the United Colonies at Hartford, to settle the various 
long-standing disputes between New Netherland and New 
England, in the hope of establishing a " perpetual and 
happy peace." For this convention Stuyvesant made the 
autumn journey from New Amsterdam in state. The 
immortal Knickerbocker tells of his suite of the " ' wisest 
and weightiest men ' of the community, that is to say, men 
with the oldest heads and heaviest pockets." And how 
when these " ponderous bm-ghers " departed on this em- 
bassy, " all the old men and the old women " of the Man- 
hattoes " predicted that men of such weight, with such 
evidence, would leave the Yankees no alternative but to 
pack up their tin-kettles and wooden wares, put wife and 
children in a cart, and abandon all the lands of their High 
Mightinesses on which they had squatted." By the arbi- 
trators' decision, however, the Dutch got the little end of 
the bargain. They were allowed only the land about the 
fort then actually occupied by them, and marked by cer- 
tain defined bounds ; all the remaining territory that had 



64 Connecticut River 

been taken into Hartford bounds, on both sides of the 
River, being confirmed as in the jurisdiction of the English. 
The " happy peace" was of short duiation. By 1653, 
when the war between England and Holland was on, and 
Connecticut, spoiling for a fight with New Netherland, 
was held back only by the refusal of Massachusetts to 
join, happy peace was completely shattered. With the 
reports of a Dutch and Indian plot to destroy the English 
plantations, and the sharp passages between the commis- 
sioners of the United Colonies and Stuyvesant as to his 
complicity in the alleged plot, an accusation hotly charged 
and denied, the House of Hope appears to have been 
quietly abandoned. Then came upon the scene that rest- 
less soldier and worldly Puritan, Captain John Underbill, 
— he whose sword, trained in the British service in the 
Low Countries, in Ireland and in Cadiz, had been with 
the Dutch as well as the English in American-Indian wars ; 
a hero of the Pequot war ; leader of the " flying army " in 
the Dutch war against the Indians of Long Island and 
the mainland ; sometime of Boston, disciplined there by the 
church and confessing with much " blul)bering " and little 
sincerity to " foul sins " against the social code ; sometime 
of Stamford on the Sound ; later of Flushing on Long 
Island imder the Dutch ; there, when the moment seemed 
propitious, hoisting the Parliament colors and calling upon 
the commonality of New Amsterdam to " accept and sub- 
mit ye to the Parliament of England." Ordered to quit 
the Dutch province, he fled to Rhode Island ; thence, with 
a roving commission under the seal of the colony of Provi- 
dence Plantations giving him and William Dyer " full 
power and authority to defend themselves from the Dutch 
and all enemies of the commonwealth of England," this 
robustious hero started out on a little war of his own. 



The FaU of the House of Hope 65 

Armed with his commission, Underhill made his appear- 
ance on the River one June day, and proceeding to the 
House of Hope posted this flaming notice on its outer door : 

Whereas, By virtue off Commission graunted me by Providence 
Collonye, authorized by the Councell of State, and I hauinge in the 
said Commission full power for land service against ye Dutch in 
these terms following — " It is farther resolved yt Capt. Jo. Under- 
hill shall be Commander in Cheife in ye service against ye Dutch by 
land & Mr Wm Dyer in Cheife by Water," — and by virtue of ye sd 
Commission, and according to Act of Parlyment and wth permission 
from ye Generall Court of Hartford, — 

I Jo Underhill doe seize upon this hous and lands thereunto 
belonging as Dutch goods claymed by ye West India Company in 
Amsterdam enemies of the Commonweal of England, and thus to 
remayne seized till further determined by ye said Court. 

Hartford, this 27th of June, 1653. 

There is no record of the permission from the Hartford 
government which Underhill claimed to have had. He 
apparently acted on his own responsibility, and treated the 
property as his private spoils. For he subsequently twice 
sold it, giving his personal deed. In less than ten months 
after his seizure, the Hartford coiut, ignoring his action, 
sequestered the property by virtue of its own authority, in 
this order : 

[April session, 1654] . . . Ordered and declared, that the Dutch 
howse the Hope with the lands, buildings, and fences thereunto be- 
longing, bee hereby sequestered and resarued, all perticular claimes 
or prtended right thereunto notwithstanding, in the behalfe of the 
Common wealth of England, till a true tryall may be had of the 
prmises, & in the meane time this Coui-t prohibitts all persons what- 
soeuer from improving of the premises by vertue of any former title 
had, made, or giuen, to them or any of them, by any of the Dutch 
natyon, or any other, without the aprobatyon of this Courte, or 
excejit it bee by vertue of power & order rec'd from them for their 



66 Connecticut River 

Boe doing ; & whatever rent for any part of the premises in any of 
their hands, it nhall not be disposed off but according to what order 
they shall receiue from this Court or the Magistrates thereof. 

In July came the news of peace between England and 
Holland with the treaty stipulating that each side should 
hold what it had taken. So the last foothold of the Dutch 
on the Connecticut was finally broken, and the English 
colonists were supreme in the River's possession. 

The House of Hope and its grounds remained seques- 
tered for a year, or till July, 1655, when Underbill made 
his second sale. The transaction was in spite of a decree 
of the Hartford covnt two months before, I'efusing a peti- 
tion from him for permission to sell, his rights in the 
property being definitely denied. The grantees were Wil- 
liam Gibbons and Richard Low, both responsible citizens 
of Hartford, " distinguished for their probity, enterprise, 
and good service to the country." Accordingly, it is 
assumed, the cotu-t made no interference with the transfer, 
contenting itself with the formal record of its own rights 
in the case. 

In the process of time, however, the unceasing River 
removed what the court left undisturbed. Every vestige 
of the site on which the House of Hope stood was long 
ago worn away ; and of the house itself the only memorial 
is a single yellow Holland brick now among the relics of 
the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford. 




,WAH»-,y»'s' 



o S 

'7Z o 

■2 I 

o -' 

Oh _H 

:3 u 



VI 

Saybrook Fort 

The Saybrook Plantation for Important Colonists who never came — The 
Questioned Story of the Embarkation of Cromwell and Hampden — 
Beginnings by George Fenwick — Lion Gardiner's grim Humor — John 
Winthrop the Younger: a Remarkable Personage — Fenwick's Home on 
Saybrook Point — Lady Fenwick — John Higginson, the Chaplain — 
Lady Fenwick's lonely Tomb — The second Saybrook Fort, Scene of an 
Adventure of Andros in 1675 — Beginnings of Yale College at Saybrook — 
The " Saybrook Platform " — First Book Printed in Connecticut. 

SAYBROOK remained the sole foothold of the Lords 
and Gentlemen on the River lands for five years after 
the establishment of the Connecticut colony, and then was 
absorbed in it. Then- great project had early faded out. 
Of the noble company of "persons of quality" with 
" three himdred able men," for whose coming in 1636 
Lion Gardiner had industriously prepared, only two ap- 
peared, — George Fenwick and his man-servant. Numerous 
others of "figure and distinction" had undoubtedly made 
ready for removal, but circumstances changed then- plans. 
There appears to be fair ground for belief that among them 
were Sir Arthm- Hazlerig, Sir Matthew Bojruton, and the 
commoners Fym, Hampden, and Cromwell. Although au- 
thorities widely differ as to this tradition, the lay reader is 
disposed to accept it, fascinated by its picturesqueness, and 
for the zest it gives to speculation upon what might have 
been. Thus the story runs, as evolved by the various 
'writers from the original statement of Dr. George Bates, 
physician to Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II respec- 

67 



68 Connecticut River 

tively. Cromwell, Hampden and the rest were passengers 
on one of a fleet of eight ships ready to sail, in the spring 
of 1638, when by orders passed in council the vessels were 
stayed and all the passengers and provisions put ashore. 
Subsequently the vessels were permitted to depart, but this 
company remained behind. Most picturesque is Macaulay's 
portrayal of this embarkation : 

Hampden determined to leave England. Beyond the Atlantic 
Ocean a few of the persecuted Puritans had formed in the wilder- 
ness of the Connecticut a settlement which has since become a pros- 
perous commonwealth. . . . Lord Saye and Lord Brook were the 
original projectors of this scheme of emigration. Hampden had 
been early consulted respecting it. He was now, it appears, desir- 
ous to withdraw himself beyond the reach of oppressors who, as he 
probably suspected, and as we know, were bent on punishing his 
manful resistance to their tyranny. He was accomjjanied by his 
kinsman, Oliver Cromwell, over whom he possessed great influence, 
and in whom he alone had discovered under an e.xterior appearance 
of coarseness and extravagance, those great and commanding talents 
which were afterward the admiration and the dread of Europe. 
The cousins took their passage on a vessel which lay in the Thames, 
and which was bound for North America. They were actually on 
board when an order of council appeared, by which the ship was 
prohibited fi-om sailing. . . . Hampden and Cromwell remained ; 
and with them remained the Evil Genius of the house of Stuart. 

How wondrously different might history have read 
had Cromwell got here, and established himself at the 
mouth of our River ! 

Fen wick was at this time again in England, having gone 
back in the summer or autumn of 1636, probably to report 
to his associates and arrange the proposed emigration. 
When the new Connecticut government was inaugurated 
he was still abroad. By midsummer following, however, 
he had retm-ned, accompanied by his family and a few 



Saybrook Fort 69 

others. Then, as agent for the patentees, he set up his 
independent establishment, and gave the plantation its 
name of Saybrook, in compliment to Lords Say and 
Brooke. 

Lion Gardiner, who had held the fort with his little 
garrison and their families from the beginning, now moved 
with a few of the soldier-farmers to the fair island across 
the Sound which perpetuates his name. Here, on friendly 
terms with the Indians, he began the first English settle- 
ment within the limits of the present State of New York, 
calling his island the Isle of Wight. His sturdy wife, 
whom he had married in Holland, had borne him two 
children while at Saybrook Fort, the eldest, a boy, being 
the first white child born in Connecticut. Gardiner was 
a valiant captain, stout of heart, and sound of head. He 
was a humorist, too, of a grim sort. When some of the 
Bay men had spoken slightingly of Indian arrows, he 
sent them a dead man's rib with an arrow's head, which 
had shot through the body, sticking so fast in the bone 
that none could withdraw it. He was firm and just in his 
dealings with the Indians, faithful to agreements, relent^ 
less in warfare. He was a strategist, often circumventing 
the wily enemy with "pretty pranks," some of which he 
related in his old age, whereby " young men may learn," 
that they " may with such pretty pranks preserve them- 
selves from danger; for policy is needful in wars as well 
as strength." 

John Winthrop the younger was now living at his 
Massachusetts home in Ipswich, concerned in other than 
Connecticut interests. His dwelling at Saybrook Fort 
had been confined to a few months or weeks in 1636. 
He had taken no steps for the renewal of his commission 
as governor for the Lords and Gentlemen after its techni- 



70 Connecticut River 

eal expiration in 1637 ; but the term still held with him. 
He did not come permanently to reside in Connecticut till 
1645 or 1646. Then he fixed his home in the conquered 
Pequot country, founding New London. At the same 
time he had a summer lodge on Fisher's Island, off the 
mouth of Mystic River, in the Sound, which was granted 
him in 1640, and remained a preserve of the Winthi'op 
family through six generations. He became officially con- 
nected with the Connecticut colony in 1651, being that year 
chosen one of the higher magistrates. He established him- 
self at Hartford when he first became governor of the 
colony in 1657, after having lived a year or two previ- 
ously at New Haven. After his first term in this gover- 
norship he was deputy governor. Chosen again governor 
in 1659, he was continued in the executive office by annual 
election from that time till his death in 1676, a period of 
sixteen years. He was through his prime Connecticut's 
foremost man. In culture he surpassed his remarkable 
father, the first statesman of Massachusetts. " Books 
fvu'nished employment to his mind ; the study of nature 
according to the principles of the philosophy of Bacon 
was his delight, for ' he had a gift in understanding and 
art.' " He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Philo- 
sophical Transactions at its foundation in London, when 
modern science was young. He was " one of the greatest 
chymists and physicians of his age," the historian Trum- 
bull notes. He was amiable, large minded, and tactful in 
affairs. He "noiselessly succeeded in all that he under- 
took," says Bancroft. " God gave him favour in the eyes 
of all with whom he had to do," was the elder Winthiop's 
pious testimony. He " inherited much of his father's 
combination of audacity with velvet tact," was John 
Fiske's more modern phrasing. When in 1661, upon the 



Saybrook Fort 71 

Restoration, he was chosen as the colony's agent to pre- 
sent their petition to Charles II for a charter under the 
royal seal, " the New World was full of his praises." 
" Puritan and Quaker, and the freemen of Rhode Island 
were alike his eulogists ; the Dutch at New York had 
confidence in his integrity." In London, enlisting the 
powerful influence of those constant friends of the colonies, 
Lord Say and Sele, now the venerable sole survivor of the 
noblemen interested in the Lords and Gentlemen's patent, 
and the Earl of Manchester, now Chamberlain of the 
King's Plousehold, he accomplished his mission with sur- 
prising ease. The king received him and the petition 
" with uncommon grace and favour." Fixed in history is 
the statement that the king's good will was won by a 
clever courtier-like stroke. " Mr. Winthrop had an extra- 
ordinary ring which had been given his grandfather by 
King Charles the first, which he presented to the king. 
This, it is said, exceedingly pleased His Majesty, as it had 
been the property of a father most dear to him." So runs 
the legend. But this is apocryphal. It was the play of 
the skill of the diplomat rather than the arts of the cour- 
tier that achieved his ends. " He knew at once how to 
maintain the rights and claims of Connecticut and how to 
make Charles II think him the best fellow in the world," 
says Fiske. So he secured the charter, which, passing the 
seals April 20, 1662, confirmed to the Connecticut colony 
the territory covered by the Lords and Gentlemen's patent, 
and the right to govern themselves, precisely as they had 
been doing ; and summarily annexed to them the neigh- 
boring New Haven colony, much to the disturbance of the 
latter's theocratic party, but " hailed with delight " by 
" the disfranchised minority." This was the charter that 
a quarter century after was hidden from Andros in the 



72 Connecticut River 

Charter Oak, and the historical duplicate of which, in 
its frame of wood from the historic tree, is now displayed 
in the Hartford State House. 

Fenwick maintained his independent state of Saybrook 
till the end of 1644. Then he ceded it to the up-river 
colony with the jurisdiction of the entire territory claimed 
under the Lords and Gentlemen's patent, and so finis was 
written to their scheme. Conditions of the transfer were 
the pa3Tnent to Fenwick of certain duties on corn, biscuit, 
beaver skins, and live stock exported from the River's 
mouth, for a period of ten years. For the jurisdiction 
right, or the " Old Patent," the colony ultimately paid 
1600 pounds sterling ; but they never received this patent. 
Mr. Fenwick stipulated to deliver it *' if it come into his 
power." Its non-appearance is regarded by those who 
have questioned its existence as pretty fair evidence for 
their contention. Subsequently, when seeking the royal 
charter, the colony declared, in their letter to Lord Say 
and Sele, whose aid they desired, that they had been 
forced to this purchase through the threat of Mr. Fenwick, 
then the sole patentee, to impose duties on the people, or 
sell the patent to the Dutch unless they purchased it. 
After the sale Fenwick became one of the magistrates of 
the colony. About 1648, on returning to England, he 
was made a colonel in the Parliamentary army. He was 
chosen a member of Parliament, and named one of the 
" high court of justice " which condemned the king. In 
the latter body, however, he failed to serve. He died at 
Berwick, while governor there, in 1657. 

Fenwick' s home on Saybrook Point was described by 
Thomas Lechford in 1641 as a "fau-e house," well forti- 
fied. It must have been a gracious household in the 



Saybrook Fort 73 

wilderness, bestowing a refined hospitality. Lady Fen- 
wick was a gentlewoman, born Alice Apsley, daughter of 
Sir Edward Apsley. She was widow of Sir John Boteler 
when she married " Master Fenwicke," at the time a 
lawyer of Gray's Inn, and a man of means. With them 
here as chaplain was the then youthful John Higginson, 
who had come over in 1629 with his father, Francis 
Higginson, first minister of Salem in the Bay Colony, and 
ancestor of the Higginsons in America. He had been a 
teacher at Hartford, living with Mr. Hooker as " student, 
helper, and scribe." He was the minister afterward long 
settled at Salem, where he succeeded his father. His 
ministry there continued till his death at the great age of 
ninety-three, which inspired his rhyming eulogist to the 
elegant lines : — 

Young to the pulpit he did get 

And Seventy-Two Years in't did sweat. 

After seven short years of pioneer life the gentle Lady 
Fenwick died, leaving with her husband two little daugh- 
ters, Elizabeth and Dorothy, both born in the fortified 
manor house on Saybrook Point. Her grave was made 
within the enclosure of the fort. For years after a mas- 
sive memorial of stone in an open field on the spot where 
the first settlers had lived marked the lonely tomb. When 
the iconoclasm of our age with its ruthless sweep threatr 
ened to scatter her dust, it was removed to a protected 
place in the old burying ground at the Point, near the 
graves of seven generations of her descendants. It is 
related that when the remains were disinterred for this 
removal " the skeleton was found to be nearly entire," 
and beneath the skull lay " a heavy braid of auburn hair, 
which was parcelled out among the villagers. 



74 Connecticut River 

The first Saybrook Fort stood till 1647, when, in the 
depth of winter, during a temjjestuous night, it caught fire, 
and was destroyed with all the buildings inside the pali- 
sade, the commandant and his family barely escaping with 
their lives. The following year a new and stouter fortress 
was erected nearer the River's bank. This was the fort 
the surrender of which to the government of the Duke of 
York Andros demanded in July, 1675, when "Captain 
Robert Chapman and Captain Bull of Hartford so ingeni- 
ously defended the rights of the colony," that the enemy 
was undone without a shot. It is a pretty story, quite 
like a popular historical romance, in which the scenes 
move forward with dramatic precision, and the characters 
appear at the precise moment to produce a thrilling 
situation. 

When the colony had word of the intended invasion, 
they hastened detachments of militia to Saybrook and New 
London, for both places were threatened. Captain Thomas 
Bull commanded the soldiery despatched down the River. 
While they are yet on their way, the Saybrook folk are 
surprised by the sudden appearance of Major Andros with 
an armed force in the Sound, " making directly for the 
fort." Without instructions from the government as to 
how they should act in such an emergency, they are for a 
while inert and gaze helpless upon the sight. But as 
their surprise abates, "the martial spirit begins to en- 
kindle." The fort is manned and the force within drawn 
up in battle array. At this critical moment, presto! 
Captain Bull with his company ai-rives. Through the 
next two days the work of preparing fort and town for 
defence is vigorously pm-sued, while Andros's ships remain 
quietly off shore. Now Andros with several of the armed 
sloops draws up before the fort. The king's flag is 



Saybrook Fort 75 

hoisted, and formal call for surrender of fort and town is 
made. Instantly up rises His Majesty's flag on the fort, 
and Captain Bull's men are seen arranged in warlike order, 
'' with a good countenance, determined and eager for 
action." Andros dare not fire on the king's colors. So 
he lies by awaiting reply to his summons. All this day 
and part of the next his fleet are held off against the fort. 
Meantime the Assembly at Hartford, called into session 
by the critical state of the colony, have been acting. A 
protest against the invasion has been drawTi up with in- 
structions to Captain Bull. He is authorized to propose a 
reference of the matter in controversy to commissioners 
who shall meet in any place in the colony that Andi'os 
may choose.. The instnictions have been entrusted to an 
"express" who is hurrying down the River to deliver 
them. On the morning of the second day Andros requests 
admittance on shore and an interview with " the minis- 
ters and chief officer." The request is granted, and he 
comes ashore with his glittering suite. Presto ! again : at 
this very moment the " express " appears. Captain Bull, 
supported by his own officers and by the officers and gen- 
tlemen of the town, meets the major and his officers, at 
the landing, and salutations are exchanged. Captain Bull 
announces his receipt that moment of instructions to ten- 
der a treaty, with the proposal to refer the dispute to 
commissioners " caj^able of determining it according to 
law and justice." Major Andi'os rejects the proposal, and 
forthwith commands '• in His Majesty's name, that the 
duke's patent and the commission which he had received 
from his royal highness " be read. Captain Bull com- 
mands also in the king's name, that he " forbear reading." 
Andros's clerk attempts to read, when the captain repeats 
his command, " with such energy and voice and meaning 



76 Connecticut River 

in his countenance " that the major is convinced " it is 
not safe to proceed." The reading stayed, the captain 
informs the major of the address of the Assembly and 
forthwith reads this document. At its conclusion the 
major, pleased with the captain's " bold and soldier-like 
appearance," asks his name. 

^' My name is Bull, sir." 

" Bull ? It is a pity that your horns are not tipped with 
silver." 

So ends the parley. The major gives up his design of 
seizing the fort, and is escorted to his boat by the full 
body of the militia in the town. Soon after his fleet sails 
away. 

The original palisade extended across the long neck of 
Saybrook Point and protected the land approaches from in- 
cursions of the Indians. Westward of the original fort a 
generous square was laid out, in which were to be placed 
the houses of those "gentlemen of distinction and figure," 
Hazelrig, Cromwell, Hampden, and the others who failed 
to come out. Some seventy years after, midway between 
the palisade and the fort, was erected a house of greater 
note. This was the home of the collegiate school, in which 
Yale College had its beginning. In this long, low, one- 
story structure, the embryo university spent its first sixteen 
years. Although the preliminary steps were elsewhere 
taken, here in 1701 its corporate life began, and here its 
functions were exercised till the removal to New Haven 
was accomplished. 

So Yale College was of Connecticut River birth, and 
the pioneer of the noble line of higher institutions 
that now occupy its banks through three states, in their 
number and variety giving the Connecticut a unique 



Saybrook Fort 77 

distinction among American rivers as a seat of American 
colleges. 

It was no fault of Saybrook that Yale was not retained 
on the Connecticut. The decision for removal stirred Say- 
brook to the core, and roused some of her people even to 
open resistance. When in December, 1718, three months 
after the first commencement at New Haven had been held, 
a majority of the trustees attempted to remove the college 
library, which was still retained in Saybrook, such opposi- 
tion was encountered that the aid of the governor and coun- 
cil was invoked. This body came down from Hartford and 
issued a warrant to the sheriff to seize the books. The 
officer proceeded to his duty, but found the house where 
they were kept barred by resolute men prepared to resist 
him. Summoning assistance, he at length forced an en- 
trance. Then a guard was placed over the property for 
the night, and its removal to New Haven was set for the 
following day. In the morning it was discovered that the 
carts engaged for the transportation had been disabled and 
their horses turned adrift. New provisions were made, and 
the new teams started off under the escort of the major of 
the covmty. The trials of the movers, however, were not 
yet over. Along the roads their progress was hindered 
through the absence of several bridges which had been 
broken up. They finally reached New Haven, only to find 
on counting the books that the number was short by more 
than two hundred and fifty. The missing volumes, says 
the chronicler, had been " disposed of by persons unknown, 
together with some valuable papers, in the confusion which 
arose at the taking of the library, and no discovery of them 
was made afterward." 

Even after the institution had become fully fixed at New 
Haven the instruction of students was for some time dog- 



78 Connecticut River 

gedly continued at Saybrook, the youths appearing in New 
Haven only to receive their degrees. Others obtained their 
tuition at Hartford ; and more at Wethersfield (both of 
which towns had competed for the college) ; so that at first 
more than half of the students of the new Yale were in- 
structed outside of New Haven, and in the River towns, 
meeting at the official seat of the college only on com- 
mencement for their degrees. Indeed, at Wethersfield a 
commencement was held and degrees conferred on the very 
day that the first commencement took place at New Haven. 
The Wethersfield degrees, however, were subsequently rati- 
fied at New Haven, and peace succeeded the imhappy dis- 
cord. As President Clap, in his " The Annals or History 
of Yale College" (1766), quaintly records: ". . . . the 
Spirits of Men began by Degrees to subside ; and a general 
Harmony was gradually introduced among the Trustees, 
and the Colony in general. The Rev. Mr. Woodbridge 
[of Hartford] and Mr. Buckingham [the Saybrook minis- 
ter : the two chief opponents among the trustees of the 
New Haven seat] became very friendly to the college and 
New Haven, and forward to promote all its Interests. 
The Trustees in Testimony of their Friendship and Regard 
to Mr. Woodbridge chose him for Rector pro Tempore ; 
and he accordingly moderated and gave Degrees at the 
commencement Anno 1723." 

In the Saybrook College house also met, it is supposed, 
the synod of 1708 which formed the Saybrook Platform, 
that strict ecclesiastical code the adoption of which by the 
Legislature fixed upon Connecticut an established church. 
Thus Congregationalism, as defined in this document, be- 
came the religion of the state by legislative enactment, and 
held for seventy-six years, making " dissenters " of aU not 



\,. 




First Site of Yale College, 
Old Saybrook. 



Saybrook Fort 79 

conforming to it. The synod was composed of sixteen 
members, twelve ministers and four laymen. Eight or 
nine of the ministers were at the time trustees of the col- 
lege ; and the assembly convened on the occasion of the 
annual commencement. Thus the association of synod and 
college was intimate. But although the corporation adoptr 
ed the code, and theological instruction predominated for 
some time in the institution, its scojae gradually broadened 
as the years advanced, more in conformity with the plan de- 
fined in its charter, — for " instructing youth in the arts and 
sciences who may be fitted for public employment both in 
church and civil state." This synod was the third council, 
probably, that sat at Saybrook, to attempt the imion of 
church and state, the first assembling in 1668, well before 
the foundation of the college. Its Saybrook Platform was 
constructed, formidably, of a Confession of Faith, Heads of 
Agreement, and Fifteen Articles for the administration of 
church discipline. The discussions, controversies, and hard- 
ships to which it gave rise through the years of its legal 
establishment have faded into oblivion, and to-day the 
Saybrook Platform is chiefly interesting as the first book 
printed in Connecticut, nm off in 1710 at New London, on 
the printing press which was given to the Colony by Gov- 
ernor Gurdon Saltonstall, great grandson of Sir Richard 
Saltonstall of the Lords and Gentlemen's project. 

A vestige of Saybrook Fort remained till the seventies 
of the nineteenth century, the dominant note in the quiet 
landscape at this point of the River. Then all was swept 
away, together with the old contours of the site, and mod- 
em structures, useful but unpicturesque, occupied the 
place. 



VII 

Early Perils of Colonial Life 



The Eiver Settlements of the Colonial Period — Confined to the Lower Valley 
for a Century- — The First Settlers completely environed by Savages — The 
Various Tribes and their Seats — The Dominating Pequots — Covert Attacks 
upon the Settlers — Massacre of Captains Stone and Norton vpith their Ship's 
CrevF. — The Killing of John Oldham off Block Island. — Avenged by Captain 
John Gallop — The " Earliest Sea-Fight of the Nation " — A Graphic Colo- 
nial Sea-Story. 

COLONIAL life on the River was confined for a cen- 
tury to the Lower Valley in Connecticut and Massa- 
chusetts. Till the middle of the seventeenth century it 
was narrowed to Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield, and Say- 
brook of the Connecticut Colony and Springfield alone in 
the Massachusetts jurisdiction. Springfield was then the 
uppermost Valley settlement, at the frontier of the Wilder- 
ness. By the close of the seventeenth century only four 
River towns had been added to the Connecticut Colony, 
and eight had been formed in the Massachusetts limits. 
These were Middletown, East Haddam, Haddam, and Lyme 
in Connecticut, and Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield, Deer- 
field, Noi'thfield, Westfield, Suffield, and Enfield in Massa- 
chusetts. Middletown, when established in 1653, was the 
first connecting link between the up-river towns and Say- 
Ijrook. East Haddam, below, on the east side of the River, 
was begun a decade later ; Haddam, on the west side, in 
1668 ; and Lyme the previous year, cut in part from Say- 
brook. Of the added Massachusetts group, Northampton 

80 



Early Perils of Colonial Life 81 

was the chief settlement and was nearly as old as the Con- 
necticut Middletown. having been founded in 1653. Had- 
ley, on the east side, was begun in 1661 ; Hatfield and 
Deerfield, on the west side, in 1670 and 1671 ; and North- 
field, at the northern frontier, in 1673. But Deerfield and 
Northfield were both destroyed in King Philip's War of 
1675-76, and Deerfield was not permanently resettled till 
1682, while Northfield remained unoccupied till after 
the opening of the eighteenth century, an attempt at re- 
settlement in 1685 having failed. Westfield, Enfield and 
Suffield were taken from Springfield's original domain 
extending over both sides of the River. The first was or- 
ganized in 1669, the others in 1680 and 1681 respectively, 
though laid out a decade earlier. Enfield and Suffield 
passed from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts to the Con- 
necticut Colony in 1752, upon the settlement of years of 
dispute between the two colonies over the boimdary line. 

Till well toward the middle of the eighteenth centm-y 
the Valley above the north Massachusetts line, through 
New Hampshire and Vermont, for the most part remained 
the Wilderness. Only the hunter and the trapper, the sol- 
dier and the Indian captive borne o& to far away Canada, 
had penetrated its vast solitudes, bringing back — they 
who did get back — entrancing tales of its beauty and 
riches. Till 1723 Northfield, embracing its present neigh- 
bor Vernon, of Vermont, and part of Hinsdale, New Hamp- 
shire, was the outmost English post. 

The earliest records of the River are of encounters with 
the aborigines. Very soon after the English establishment 
in the lower Valley, tragic conflicts with them arose. 
When the English first came the Indians of Connecticut 
were more numerous in proportion to the extent of the 
territory than in any other part, of New England. Neither 



82 Connecticut River 

wars nor pestilence had so depopulated this region as some 
" other parts of the Eastern country. How completely the 
savages environed the early River settlers appears when 
the tribes and their seats are enumerated. 

Scattered on both sides between the River's mouth and 
Windsor were the various native tribes whom the Pequot 
invaders had vanquished some time about 1630, and whose 
domains they were holding as conquered territory. These 
tribes, before their vanquishment, are presumed to have 
been confederated under Altarbaenhoot, or Netawanute, the 
banished sachem whom the Plyuiouth Colony's expedition 
restored to his seat at Windsor in 1633. They embraced 
the bands that Block in 1614 described as the " nation 
called Sequins," with then' lodges on both sides of the River 
at or above the great bend at Middletown ; and the Nawaas 
with their fortified town at South Windsor. When the 
first English colonists came the Sequins were occupying 
"neutral ground " in the immediate neighborhood of the 
Dutch House of Hope. This ground was so called in 
accordance with the agreement when the Dutch made their 
purchase from the Pequot sachem, four years before the 
restoration of Netawanute, that these- lands should be 
exempt from Indian warfare. According to J. Hammond 
Trumbull, the Sequins were the Indians subsequently 
called by the English the Wonguuks, from their principal 
seat about the River's bend between Middletown and Port- 
land. Their territory, Mr. Trumbull believes, extended 
from the north part of Haddam, northerly, on both sides 
of the River, to some distance above Windsor. The Se- 
qeen chief, probably he who was known to the English as 
Sowheag, variously designated as " sachem of the Matta- 
beseck," which became Middletown, and '' sachem of 
Pyquang," where Wethersfield was planted, had his 




13 



s 



Early Perils of Colonial Life 83 

" castle " at Mattabeseck, overlooking the broad domain 
over which in his time he had been lord. At Machemoodus, 
which became East Haddam, dwelt a numerous sub-tribe 
" famous for pawaws," or powwows, and "worshipping 
evil spirits." 

Above Windsor were the Pocumtucks, the leading tribe, 
according to George Sheldon, historian of Deerfield, of a 
powerful confederation occupying and dominating the Val- 
ley and its tributaries as far north as Brattleborough, 
Vermont. Sub-tribes or allies of the Pocumtucks from the 
region of Windsor up the River were : the Tunxis on the 
Farmington River, at and near its confluence with the Con- 
necticut; the Podunks, seated near Windsor; the Aga- 
wams, whose principal seat was at Springfield, and who 
claimed the territory on both sides of the River between 
Enfield Falls and South Hadley Falls ; the Warranokes, 
west of Springfield, with their chief village at the present 
Westfield on the Agawam, now Westfield, River ; and the 
Naunawatucks, or Nonatucks, situated on both sides of the 
River at Northampton and Hadley, with then* village and 
their forts, the principal forts being near the mouth of 
Half -Way Brook, between Northampton and Hadley, and 
on a ridge between Hadley meadows. The Pocumtucks 
centered in the Deerfield Valley, and were most thickly 
settled about the mouth of the Deerfield River in Deerfield, 
where was their principal fort on what is yet called Fort 
Hill. Northward were the Squakheags, occupying jointly 
with the Pocumtucks the territory now of Northfield, Ver- 
non, Vermont, and Hinsdale, New Hampshire, — a fugitive 
band from the Hudson River, Sheldon is led to believe. 
They were probably, he says, a fragment of the Mahicans, 
driven away from their original homes by the Mohawks of 
the Five Nations in 1610. 



84 Connecticut River 

The Valley in what are now New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont was unoccupied as the seat of any considerable body 
of natives. It was rather a thoroughfare between con- 
tending powerful tribes. Vermont was a beaver hunting 
ground of the Iroquois, the confederated Five Nations. 

The warring Pequots were seated east of the River's 
mouth, on the coast, chiefly between the Thames and the 
Mystic Rivers. They were also a branch of the Hudson- 
River Mahicans, driven out by the Mohawks. Fighting 
their way to the coast before the coming of Block, they had 
taken possession of part of the territory of the Niantic 
tribe on both sides of the Mystic. By the time the English 
had come these Pequots had subdued and held tributary 
besides the Niantics and the lower Connecticut Valley 
tribes, the Block Island Indians, and several tribes upon 
Long Island. West of the Thames River and north of the 
Pequots dwelt the Mohegans (as they came to be known 
after the settlement of the English), an offshoot of the 
Pequots. Their sagamore was that Uncas who became the 
staunch ally of the English, and attained great power in 
colonial Indian affau-s which lasted for more than forty 
years. He was heir apparent to the Pequot sachemdom 
through the female line, his mother being aunt to Wapeg- 
woot, the reigning sachem at the time of the first Eng- 
lish move to the River. Having grown proud, and, 
it was said, treacherous to the reigning sachem, he had 
suffered repeated humblings at the chief's hands. Again 
and again he had been driven from his country, and per- 
mitted to return only upon promise of submission. Dur- 
ing one of his seasons of banishment, according to J. 
Hammond Trumbull, he, or some of his people, became 
connected with the Nawaas up the River. Such was the 
situation at the beginning of the English settlements. 



Early Perils of Colonial I^ife 85 

After Wapegwoot was slain, Uncas had made claim to the 
Pequot sachemdom, but the " ambitious, cruel, and agres- 
sive " Sassacus (significant name), son of Wapegwoot, was 
elevated to the place. Under Sassacus were twenty-six 
minor sachems, or war captains. The Pequot and Mohe- 
gan country covered a tract of nearly thirty square miles. 

East of the Pequots were the Narragansetts, occupying 
what became Rhode Island, and then the largest tribe in 
New England. They were the only Indians in the vicin- 
ity whom the Pequots had not subdued, and perpetual war 
existed between the two tribes. Of the Narragansetts, 
Miantonomo, a wily fellow, nephew of Canonicus, the chief 
sachem, was the ruling spirit. In the northeast part of 
Connecticut and in central Massachusetts were the Nip- 
mucks, scattered in small clans. At Brookfield, Massa- 
chusetts, through which the " Bay Path " subsequently 
ran, were the Quabaugs, classed, Sheldon says, as sub- 
jects both of Uncas and the Deerfield Pocumtucks, but 
finally absorbed by the Nipmucks. The inland Connecti- 
cut tribes west of the River were tributary to the Mohawks 
who had brought their conquests thus far eastward. 

While the River tribes generally welcomed the English 
colonists as possible allies against the Pequots, and, to fortify 
their friendship, performed at first many acts of kindness to- 
ward the newcomers, the dominating Pequots were hostile 
from the outset. These imperious princes of the soil viewed 
the English as interlopers whose advance must be checked 
in a region which had become their own by the right 
above all others to the savage mind — the right of con- 
quest. Moreover, the Englishmen had defied them by re- 
storing River sachems whom they had conquered to the 
authority which they had overthrown and the territory 
which they had made their own. Their hostility was dis- 



80 Connecticut River 

played not in open warfare, but in covert attacks upon ex- 
posed settlers, and in inciting the depending tribes to ra- 
pine and murder. Besides these perils from an insidious 
foe, tribal jealousies and the treacherous Indian nature 
rendered the situation of the colonists most hazardous at 
the beginning of their settlements, and they were forced to 
be perpetually on guard. 

So early as 1634, before the greater immigration to the 
River had begun, an act was committed which led to grave 
results. This was the murder of the two traders, Captains 
Stone and Norton, and their ship's crew of eight men, by 
Indians of a tribe in confederacy with the Pequots. 

The mariners were from St. Christopher, West Indies, 
and had come into the River bound for the Dutch House 
of Hope to trade. Somewhere above the River's mouth 
they were met with friendly demonstrations by the Indians, 
several of whom were known to Captain Stone from previ- 
ous trading visits. Engaging two or three of them to pi- 
lot two of his men to the Dutch House in a skiff, he laid his 
ship to the shore. The voyagers in the skiff paddled on 
cheerfully till nightfall, when, hauling their boat against 
the shore, the two sailors curled up to sleep. So soon as 
slumber was upon them their guides rose stealthily and 
killed them both without a struggle. Meanwhile the ship 
below had been Ijoarded by others of the band whom the 
crew were entertaining. At length Captain Stone fell 
asleep in his cabin. At a moment when most of the crew 
were ashore these Indians silently took the captain's life. 
Casting a covering over him to conceal their work, they 
joined the remainder of the band, who fell upon the crew 
and massacred them all. Captain Norton, however, had 
escaped them. Pinned in the cook-room he made a long 



Early Perils of Colonial Life 87 

and resolute fight for his life, which an accident brought 
to an end. " That he might load and fire with the great- 
est expedition he had placed powder in an open vessel near 
at hand." In the height of the action the powder took 
fire, and the explosion so burned and blinded him that 
" after all his gallantry he fell with his helpless compan- 
ions." The plunder which was taken from the vessel was 
divided between the sachem Sassacus and the head sachem 
of the tribe to which the band belonged. 

It was shortly after this affair that the Pequots sought 
the Massachusetts Bay government for a league of peace, 
their messengers bearing gifts to Boston to foster the 
scheme. The crafty move was in part to offset the possi- 
ble consequence of their connection with this massacre. 
Another object was to checkmate the Narragansetts, who 
were at the time warring fiercely upon them, and with 
whom the Bay men had friendly relations. Another was to 
get support against the Dutch, who, in avenging the Pe- 
quots' acts, had killed several of their fighting men in- 
cluding a sachem. The Bay men at first would listen to 
their proposals only on condition that they should agree to 
deliver up Captain Stone's mmderers. But after assiu-- 
ances that all but two of the band were dead and that the 
survivors if guilty woidd be punished ; and after offers had 
been made to concede all their rights in the River region 
to the Bay Colony, and promises had been given to hand 
over " four hundred fathoms of wampum, forty beaver and 
thirty other skins " as compensation for the slaughter of 
the Englishmen, — after these explanations and conditions 
the Bay men entered into the treaty desired. The articles 
were drawn up and duly signed. But no hostages were 
taken to secure the fulfillment of the conditions, and the 
Pequots never performed a single one of them. < 



88 Connecticut River 

By the summer of 1636 their depredations had been re- 
newed with more vigor. The crowning barbarous act of 
this season was the killing of Captain John Oldham, the 
pioneer English trader in the Valley and leader in the 
planting of Wethersfield. Oldham had been " long out 
a-trading " in his pinnace, having with him two English 
boys and two Narragansett Indians ; and when off Block 
Island he was suddenly overwhelmed by a crowd of savages 
who " cleft his head to the brains." Then they secured his 
companions and proceeded to remove the plunder from the 
vessel. Fortunately, while thus busied, they were sighted 
from a distance by another Englishman cruising off the 
Sound in a little bark with a crew of one man and two 
boys. This was Captain John Gallop, the famous first pi- 
lot of Boston Harbor, for whom Gallop's Island there is 
named. He had been up our River and was intending to 
put in at Long Island to trade, but was forced by a sud- 
den change in the wind to bear up for Block Island. When 
he espied the pinnace he drew toward it and discovered it 
to be John Oldham's. The deck was seen to be " full of 
Indians." He was in hailing distance before they were 
aware of his presence. Then ensued a gallant chase, finish- 
ing with swift retribution upon the chief actors in the 
tragedy. Cooper, in his Naval Hwiory of the United States, 
describes this engagement as " the earliest sea-fight of the 
nation." Winthrop, senior, gives the tale, — a terse and 
graphic sea-story in his telling : 

So they [the Gallop party] hailed, but had no answer ; and the 
deck was full of Indians (fourteen in all), and a canoe was gone 
from her full of Indians and goods. Whereupon they suspected that 
they had killed John Oldham, and the rather, because the Indians 
let slip, and set up sail, being two miles from shore, and the wind 
and tide being off the shore of the Island, whereby they drove to- 



Early Perils of Colonial Life 89 

ward the main at Narragansett. Whereupon they [the Gallop party] 
went ahead of them, and having but two pieces and two pistols, and 
nothing but duck shot, they bear up near the Indians (who stood 
ready armed with guns, pikes, and swords) and let fly among them, 
and so galled them that they all gate under hatches. Then they 
stood off again, and retiring with a good gale, they stemmed her upon 
the quarter and about overset her, which so frightened the Indians 
that six of them leaped overboard and were drowned. Yet they 
durst not board her, but stood off again, and fitted their anchor so 
as, stemming her the second time there, bored her boom [bow] 
through with their anchor, and so sticking fast to her, they made 
divers shot through her (being but inch board), and so raked her 
fore and aft, as they must needs kill or hurt some of the Indians ; 
but, seeing none of them came forth, they gate loose from her and 
stood off again. Then four or five more of the Indians leaped into 
the sea and were likewise drowned. 

So there being now but four left in her, they boarded her; 
whereupon one Indian came up and yielded ; him they bound and 
put into hold. Then another yielded, whom they bound. But John 
Gallop, being well acquainted with their skill to untie themselves if 
two of them be together, and having no place to keep them asunder, 
they threw him [last] bound into the sea ; and looking about they 
found John Oldham under an old seine stark naked, his head cleft to 
the brains, and his hand and legs cut off, as if they had been cutting 
them off, and yet warm. So they put him into the sea ; but could 
not get to the other two Indians, who were in a little room under- 
neath, with their swords. So they took the goods which were left, 
and the sails, etc., and towed the boat away ; but night coming on, 
and the wind rising, they were forced to turn her off, and the wind 
carried her to the Narragansett shore. 

The principal contrivers of Oldham's death were found 
to have been the Block Island Indians with a number of 
under sachems of the Narragansetts, to whom the Block 
Islanders were at this juncture subject. But the Pequots 
were considered as abettors in the afEair, since several of 
the participants fled to them and received their protection. 
The Narragansett chiefs, Canouicus and Miantonomo, sue- 



90 Connecticut River 

cessfuUy cleared themselves from connection with the con- 
spiracy, and aided in the recovery of the two boys, with 
part of the plvmder from Oldham's vessel. 

The responsibility was at last fixed upon the Block 
Islanders and the Pequots, drastic measures were adopted 
by the Bay Colony government, and the first Pequot War 
ensued. 



VIII 

The Pequot Wars 

First Expedition from the Bay Colony under Endicott — Lion Gardiner's Practi- 
cal Advice — Plot to Destroy the River Settlements — Tragedies on the River 

— The Connecticut Colony's Campaign — The "Army" drawn from the 
Three River Towns — Major John Mason, the Myles Standish of the Colony 

— Hooker's Godspeed at the Embarkation — Scene on the down-river Voy- 
age — Debate of the Captains at Say brook Fort — Mason's Master-Stroke 

— The March in the Enemy's Country — Burning of Mystic Fort — End of 
the Pequots. 

TOWARD the close of August (1636) John Endicott 
as general, with a force of ninety men, four command- 
ers, and two Indians, was despatched from Massachusetts 
Bay imder a commission, truly termed sanguinary : 

" To put to death the men of Block Island, but to spare the women 
and children, and bring them away, and to take possession of the 
Island ; and from thence to go to the Pequods [Pequots] to demand 
the murderers of Captain Stone and other English, and one thou- 
sand fathoms of wampum for damages etc., and some of their chil- 
dren as hostages, which if they should refuse they were to obtain it 
[them] by force." 

Captain John Underhill was the first named of the four 
commanders. The troops embarked in three pinnaces, and 
carried two shallops. The Indians were taken as inter- 
preters. 

The expedition made first for Saybrook Fort, where it 
duly arrived to the sm-prise of Lion Gardiner, and also to 
his dismay when informed by the officers of their errand 

91 



92 Connecticut River 

.and of their intention to make the fort their rendezvous. 
He gave them a soldier's welcome, however, while stoutly 
discoimtenancing their adventure. " You come hither," 
said he, " to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you 
will take wing and flee away," — which was precisely what 
happened. When he had seen their commission, at which 
he " wondered," he entreated them to heed this advice : 
" Sirs, seeing you will go, I pray you if you don't load your 
barks with Pequots, load them with corn, for that is now 
gathered with them ready to put into their barns, and both 
you and we have need of it ... . If you cannot attain 
your end of the Pequots yet you may load your barks 
with " that " which will be welcome to Boston and tome," 
— most practical advice, for Connecticut and Massachusetts 
were then both short of a corn supply. To aid in this part 
of the enterprise Gardiner agreed to send some men from 
the fort in his own shallop. 

The assault on Block Island took place according to 
programme, but without the slaughter directed by the com- 
mission. As the force approached the island and were 
disembarking, a little crowd of Indians assembled on shore 
at a safe distance " entertained " them with arrows ; which 
fell harmlessly against the corslets of all save two, who 
were pricked on the exposed parts of their bodies. But 
when the landing was effected the Indians incontinently 
fled, and not a single one was afterward seen, though two 
days were spent on the island. Two hastily deserted vil- 
lages were found, three miles apart, and neighboring acres 
of corn, some of it gathered and laid in heaps. So, in the 
absence of men to kill and women and children to capture, 
all the wigwams were burnt, and much of the corn ; all the 
canoes fovmd were broken up ; and trophies were taken, 
among them " many well wrought mats and delightful bas- 
kets." 



The Pequot Wars 93 

Returning to Saybrook Fort the fleet lay windbound 
here for four days. Then the start was made for the Pe- 
quot country. The miniature army sailed, strengthened 
by twelve of Gardiner's men in his shallop, whose especial 
part was to take off the enemy's com. As they neared the 
Thames, then the Pequot River, " multitudes " of Indians 
ran along the shore shouting tauntingly, " What cheer, 
Englishmen ! What cheer ! Do you come to fight us ? " 
The night of their arrival they spent in New London, then 
Pequot harbor, while the Indians kept fires aglow on both 
sides to prevent a landing under cover of darkness. In 
the morning a Pequot messenger, — a " grave senior ma- 
jestical in his bearing," — came out in a canoe and de- 
manded " what they were and what they would have ? " 
Endicott stated their mission. The "ambassador" de- 
clared that Sassacus, the chief, was away at Long Island. 
Endicott bade him inform the other sachems that he would 
meet them. The Indian lingered debating the matter. 
The Stone affair, he would explain, was in retaliation for the 
killing of a sachem and other Pequots by the Dutch, and 
it was directed by the miu-dered sachem's son. It did not 
concern the English. At length he agreed to seek the 
other sachems, and paddling back to the shore disappeared 
over the bluff at its edge. Meanwhile the " army " landed 
and ascended to the bluff. In comrse of time the messen- 
ger returned, and with him some three hundred savages 
who gathered about the English. The messenger reported 
that " Sassacus " himself would be back in three hours. 
So they waited, many of the savages idling with Gardiner's 
men whom they knew. The three hours passed, and a 
fourth. Yet "there came none." All this time the people 
in the Indian villages behind were hmrying their goods 
into hiding, and their women and children to places of 
safety. 



94 Connecticut River 

At length Endicott drew his men into line, caused his 
commission to be proclaimed, and ordered the messenger 
back to his sachem with the word that if he would not at 
once come to parley, the English would fight. Then the 
wily savage shifted his ground. The sachem would appear 
if the Englishmen would lay down their arms some paces 
in their front, where the Indians would lay down their 
arrows. But Endicott, seeing perhaps in this a pretty 
strategem to get possession of their weapons, bade the 
throng " begone and shift for themselves." They had 
dared the English to come and fight, and his men were here 
and ready. Then the Indians all instantly vanished. With 
colors flying and drums beating, the English took up the 
pursuit. But not a single Indian was seen again, though 
arrows rained upon the soldiei's from behind thickets and 
rocks as they advanced. No harm was done them, for 
their corslets protected them as at Block Island. They 
kept up a lively fire in the directions from which the arrows 
came. Reaching a village they burnt all of its wigwams. 
At simset they retm'ned to their boats. Next morning they 
were ashore again, on the west side, bm-ning wigwams and 
spoiling all the canoes found there ; the while not en- 
countering an Indian in the open. 

Thus then* campaign ended. They did not go back to 
Saybrook, but returned to Boston by way of the Narragan- 
sett country. They had suffered no loss or serious injury 
to any man of the expedition. According to Gardiner they 
killed not one of the enemy, but one of the Massachusetts 
Indians who accompanied them took a Pequot scalp. The 
Narragansetts, however, afterward told of a small Pequot 
loss. Gardiner's men returned to Saybrook Fort with a 
fair cargo of captm-ed corn, after a little scrimmage of 
their own on the way back with pm'suiug Pequots, in 



The Pequot Wars 95 

which two of the English and more of the Indians were 
hurt. 

And so the wasps were raised about the ears of the 
River settlers. The Pequots, now enraged, determined to 
drive the English out. Saybrook fort was soon in almost 
constant seige. Numbers of the garrison were killed from 
ambuscades while at work in the fields outside. In one 
brisk swamp-fight Gardiner was wounded, though saved 
from severe hm-t by his buff coat. A member of a party 
attacked while harvesting hay was captured and roasted 
alive. Captives taken in raids were tortiu-ed to death in 
various hideous ways. Navigating the River became so 
perilous that all boats on entering the mouth were required 
to come to anchor at Saybrook Fort, and were not allowed 
to proceed till Gardiner had satisfied himself that they 
were sufficiently armed and manned. They were not al- 
lowed to make landing between the fort and Wethersfield. 
Small parties in shallops, though armed, were attacked be- 
tween these points and massacred. Joseph Tilly, master 
of a smaU trading vessel from Boston, which he had an- 
chored two or three miles above Saybrook, was " a-fowling " 
in a canoe with a companion. At the first discharge of 
his piece a number of Pequots rose from ambush, killed 
his companion, and seized him for torture. He was tied 
to a stake and flayed, hot embers were thrust into his flesh, 
and his fingers and toes were cut off. He died after sev- 
eral hours of suffering, but not a groan escaped him : for 
this good courage the Indians admired him as a " stout 
man." Three men coming down the River in a shallop 
were beset by several Indians in canoes. They fought 
bravely, but one was killed, the others were taken. Each 
of the prisoners was cut in twain from the legs to the head, 



96 Connecticut River 

and the mutilated bodies hung by the neck upon trees by 
'the riverside, " that as the English passed by they might 
see those miserable objects " of the Indians' vengeance. 

By the spring of 1637 the situation was at its gravest. 
The settlers, feeble in numbers, could " neither hunt, fish, 
nor cultivate the fields, nor travel at home or abroad, but 
at the jjrice of their lives. They were obliged to keep a 
constant watch by night and by day ; to go armed to their 
daily labors and to the public worship." There were grave 
fears that the Pequots would succeed in uniting the Indians 
generally against them. Even the Pequots' persistent 
foe, the Narragansetts, were now disposed to make a truce, 
impressed by the argument that if the Pequots were de- 
stroyed their own ruin would siu-ely follow. Only through 
the courageous intercession of Roger Williams were they 
dissuaded, and brought instead to make treaty with Mas- 
sachusetts Bay. The Pequots' plan of campaign Avas not 
open warfare. It was to lie in ambush and shoot the Eng- 
lish as they went about their ordinary business ; to bm-n 
their houses, destroy their crops, kill their cattle and other 
live stock ; to harass and terrorize them. Thus the Indian 
warriors believed the whites would be forced quickly to 
leave the coimtry, while they themselves would not be ex- 
posed to great hazard. 

In February the General Court at Hartford had sent a 
letter to the Bay Colony representing the dire results of 
Endicott's expedition, and urging a more effective prosecu- 
tion of their Pequot war. The same month Major John 
Mason was sent down to Saybrook from Hartford with 
twenty men to reinforce the fort, and to keep the enemy at 
a greater distance. In April following Massachusetts dis- 
patched Captain Underbill to Saybrook with twenty 
" lusty men well armed " from Boston. The latter were 



The Pequot Wars 97 

sent at the charge of the " Lords and Gentlemen." They 
were " lent " for service, not alone to protect the place from 
the Indians, but also from the Dutch, who " by their speeches 
and supplies out of HoUand " had aroused a suspicion that 
they had "some designs upon it." With Underbill's arri- 
val Mason returned with his men to Hartford, where matters 
had reached a crisis through an attack upon Wethersfield 
of a most threatening nature. 

This assault was made by a band of a hundred Pequots 
and Wethersfield Indians combined. They had one morn- 
ing suddenly risen from an ambuscade on the fringe of the 
settlement, and set upon a number of settlers going to 
their work in a neighboring field. Nine of the English 
were killed and two maidens were taken captive. The 
victors were espied from Saybrook Fort coming down the 
River in three canoes with fragments of English clothes 
fluttering from tall sticks, like sails. Concluding from 
their appearance that they were on some evil course, Lion 
Gardiner overhauled them with a shot from the fort's 
" great gun." The ball " beat off the beak head" of one 
of the canoes, which happened to be that in which were 
the captive maids. None, however, was hurt ; and before 
another shot could be fired the Indians had drawn the 
canoes over a narrow beach, and got away. 

Immediately upon this event the General Court was con- 
vened at Hartford, — that first General Courti to which the 
towns sent committees or delegates, — to deliberate on the 
perilous condition of affairs and to take action for the pres- 
ervation of the colony. It was fully recognized that the 
Pequots were " a great people, being strongly fortified, 
cruel, warlike, munitioned, &c." and the colonists only " a 
handful in comparison." But the havoc already committed 
by them, their killing of nearly thirty of the English, their 



98 Connecticut River 

persistent attempts to unite all the tribes for the extirpa- 
tion of the English, their constant pursuit in " malicious 
courses," their " great pride and iusoleucy," — these acts 
and threats necessitated the giving of some " capital blow" 
to so relentless an enemy if the colonists were to survive. 
Accordingly offensive measures were solemnly declared in 
formal vote. Thus began the real Pequot War. 

An " army " was formed of ninety men drawn from the 
tlu*ee meagre settlements of Hartford, Windsor, and 
Wethersfield ; small as it was, the levy took from one- 
third to one-half of all the able-bodied men in the planta- 
tions. Seventy Indians, mostly from the Mohegans, under 
the sachem Uncas, were joined to this force. Major John 
Mason was made the chief commander. Mason was one 
of the great captains of New England, bred to arms in tlie 
Dutch Netherlands under Sir Thomas Fairfax. He had 
come out with the Dorchester company, and was one of the 
first planters of Windsor. He became to the Connecticut 
Colony what Myles Standish was to the Pilgrims of Ply- 
mouth. He was " tall and portly, but nevertheless full of 
martial bravery and vigor." So Thomas Prince portrayed 
him. He was the man for the hom*, as events proved. 

On the tenth day of May, 1637, these motley troops em- 
barked at Hartford. With them went Samuel Stone, the 
Hartford " teacher," as chaplain. Thomas Hooker gave 
them Godspeed in a speech on their going aboard. The 
savages, he said, " should be bread for them." The " fleet " 
comprised " one pink, one pinnace, and one shallop," — 
the shallop being impressed for the service from Pynchon 
of Springfield. They fell down the River, destined first 
for Saybrook Fort. 

The passage was slow and halting from contrary winds 




c 
PQ 



o 

1-1 



> 



The Pequot Wars 99 

and low water. After several delays from running aground 
the Indian contingent became impatient, and asked to be 
set ashore that they might make their way afoot, promis- 
ing to rejoin the company at the fort. Their request was 
granted, but with some misgivings, for their loyalty was 
not assured. When nearing the fort the fleet came upon 
Captain Underbill, who had rowed out to meet them. At 
the moment the chaplain was " at prayer in the midst of 
the soldiers," the hearts of all being " perplexed," fearing 
treacher}^ in their Indian allies. Underbill silently brought 
his boat alongside and awaited the close of the unwonted 
scene on the still River. Then he cheered all mightily 
with the news of the arrival of the allies and of a great ex- 
ploit by them as a pledge of their fidelity. He told how 
upon reaching the fort they were for instantly falling out 
in search of Pequots lurking in the neighborhood ; how it 
being " the Lord's day " they were held back till the next 
morning ; how they then sallied forth, and presently re- 
turned triumphantly bringing in five gory Pequot heads 
and one wretched prisoner who had been a spy on the gar- 
rison for Sassacus. Lion Gardiner in his later " History " 
gives a different version of this affair. According to his 
story, the Indians were sent on the adventure by himself 
to test their loyalty. A band of Pequots had passed near 
the fort in a canoe the night before, and Uncas was told 
that if he would send twenty of his men after them and 
" fetch them dead or alive " he could remain with Mason's 
company ; " else not." However, be the details as they 
may, the performance was accepted by all the English as a 
" special providence," and brought them much relief. 

A gruesome sequel to this affair was the disposition of 
the prisoner-spy. Uncas and his men insisted upon exe- 
cuting him according to the manners of their ancestors. 

L, OF C. 



100 Connecticut River 

The English, in the circumstances in which they were, did 
iiot judge it prudent to interpose. Kindling a large fire, 
the Indians violently tore him limb from limb. Then 
cutting his flesh in pieces they handed it from one to 
another and devoured it, singing and dancing the while 
rovmd the fire. The bones and parts that were not con- 
sumed in this dreadful repast were '' committed to the 
flames and biu-nt to ashes." 

Mason's "army" was detained at Saybrook Fort, wind- 
bound, for three or four days. The time was occupied by 
the officers, — - Underbill and Gardiner and the otliers, — 
in discussing a plan of campaign. Gardiner marvelled, as 
he had " wondered " when the Bay men came upon their 
venture, that so hazardous a design should be attempted 
with such an inadequate force. Underbill acquiesced in 
his views. Both declared that they would not join in the 
expedition unless they "that were bred soldiers" from 
" their youth up " could see some likelihood of doing better 
than the Bay men had done. At length it was arranged 
that twenty of Mason's force should be sent back to Hart- 
ford to guard the River settlements, and that their places 
should be taken by Underbill's " lusty men." 

Next the manner of attack was warmly debated, and 
in this Mason proved the better strategist of the group. 
He was for a land attack in the rear by way of the Narra- 
gansett country. It was known that the Pequots kept a 
constant guard upon the Pequot River, hard by their strong- 
hold, expecting attack at that point ; that their numbers 
were great, and that they were well supplied with guns ; 
and he reasoned that being on land and swift of foot they 
might impede a landing there, while if approached and 
attacked from the rear they might be surprised in their 
manceuvers ; and at worst the English would be on firm 



The Pequot Wars 101 

land as well as they. The particulars of the Pequots' 
strength and preparedness had been learned from the two 
Wethersfield girls, who fortunately were now at Saybrook 
Fort, restored by the Dutch, who had retaken them from 
their captors, " a very friendly office and not to be for- 
gotten," as Mason generously recorded, regardless of the 
strained relations between the Dutchmen and the English. 
The other captains and Mason's principal men long 
stood out stoutly against his plan as involving too great 
dangers in an extended march through a hostile wilderness, 
and too long a campaign. A more speedy despatch of 
their business was deemed necessary that the yeomen might 
get back to their farms. Withal it was contrary to the 
terms of their commission, which expressly enjoined the 
landing of Mason's forces at Pequot (New London) harbor. 
And moreover this order was backed by a supplementary 
letter of instructions from the magistrates. At length, 
neither side yielding, Mason proposed that the question 
should be left to the prayers of the chaplain for decision. 
It was a master-stroke, for it is reasonable to assume that 
he knew his chaplain. The proposition meeting the ap- 
proval of all, Mr. Stone was sought aboard the pink, and 
importimed to " commend " their business " to the Lord 
that night." Mr. Stone promised his prayers, and all re- 
tired to await the result. Bright and early the next morn- 
ing the chaplain came ashore to the major's chamber, and 
informed him that the night of prayer had "fully satisfied" 
him that they should sail for Narragansett. Thereupon 
the council was reconvened, and the astute major's plan 
was adopted without further ado. All, seemingly, were 
assured in their Puritan minds, unvexed by theological 
doubts, that it had divine indorsement in direct response 
to their chaplain's petition. 



102 Connecticut River 

Mason, disciplined soldier that he was, frankly pointed 
out, in his Narrative of after years, the hazard of such de- 
parture as his from the definite instructions of official su- 
periors, and justified it only on the ground of necessity. 
" I declare not this," he wrote in his quaint way, " to en- 
courage any soldier to act beyond their commission, or con- 
trary to it : for in so doing they run a double hazard. 
There was a great commander in Belgia who did the 
States great service in taking a city ; but by going beyond 
his commission lost his life. His name was Grubben- 
dunk." If, however, a war is to be managed by judgment 
and discretion, " the Shews are many times contrary to 
what they seem to pursue : whereof the more an Enter- 
prise is dissembled and kept secret, the more facile to put 
in Execution : as the Proverb, the farthest way about is 
sometimes the nearest way home." So, — and here he 
struck a note which has been echoed by many a trained 
captain since his day, — " in Matters of War those who 
are both able and faithful should be improved, and then 
bind them not up into too narrow a Compass. For it is 
not possible for the ablest Senator to forsee all Accidents 
and Occurrents that fall out in the Management and Pur- 
suit of a War. Nay, although possibly he might be trained 
up in Military Affairs ; and truly much less can he have 
any great Knowledge who hath had but little experience 
therein." 

Mason's campaign, imder all the circumstances, was the 
most remarkable of colonial wars. The expedition set sail 
on a Friday for Narragansett Bay and arrived at their port 
toward evening of Saturday. There they kept Sunday 
aboard their boats. High winds obliged them to remain 
off shore for two days longer. After sunset of Tuesday a 



The Pequot Wars 103 

landing was effected, and Mason with a guard marched 
up to the chief sachem's wigwam, where the chief was 
met. With the formality dear to the Indian heart the 
captain exjjlained their appearance in arms in the sachem's 
country and stated their desire only to pass through it to 
the Pequot land. The English doubted not his acceptance 
of their coming, " there being love betwixt himself " and 
them, since their object was to avenge themselves, " God 
assisting," upon his own enemies, as well as theirs, for the 
" intolerable wrongs and injuries " that had been done. 
The chief approved their design, but " spake slightingly " 
of them in saying that he thought their nimibers too weak 
to deal with this enemy, who were " very great captains, 
and men skilful in war." Mason, however, let the slight 
pass, for the free thoroughfare desu-ed was attained. 

Early the next morning, leaving their vessels under pro- 
tection, the overland march was begun, along Indian trails. 
That day eighteen or twenty miles were made, and " Nay- 
anticke " (Niantic) was reached, where was a forti of another 
Narragansett sachem, Miantonomo, on the Pequot frontier. 
The Indians here appeared haughty and carried themselves 
"very proudly." They would not permit Mason's men to 
enter their fort. This lofty attitude was met with prompt 
and effective action. A guard was posted about the fort 
and all were imprisoned within their own stronghold, 
warned that none should stir out under peril of his life. 
And none did. Thus, also, they were prevented from dis- 
covering the little army to the foe. That night the Eng- 
lish quartered serenely near the fort., no " hostile " ventur- 
ing to disturb them. The following morning several of 
Miantonomo's men came forward to enlist in the expedi- 
tion, and soon others were encoirraged to join. Gathering 
into a ring, one after another made " solemn protestations 



104 



Connecticut River 



how gallantly they would demean themselves, and how 
inany " of the enemy " they would kill." At eight o'clock 
the march was resumed with some five hundred of these 
Indians added to the line. A toilsome tramp of about 
twelve miles brought the invaders to the Pococatuck River, 
between the present Westerly and Stonington, at a ford 
where they were told the Pequots usually fished. Now 
the Narragansetts who had so boasted of their prowess 
began to show fear, and many tiu-ned back homeward. 

Three miles farther on the army came upon a field 
newly planted with Indian corn. At this evidence that 
the enemy was nigh, a council of war was held. The 
Narragansetts still remaining informed them of two Pe- 
quot forts, both almost impregnable. It was resolved to 
assault both at once. But learning that they were a long 
march apart, the English were constrained to accept the 
nearest ; " much grieved " thereat, because the farther one 
was the stronghold of Sassacus, whom they were impatient 
to fight. Moving now " in a silent manner," the march 
was contiaued for about an hour into the moonlit night. 
Then coming upon a swamp between two hills, in the 
present town of Groton, they pitched their little camp, 
much wearied with hard travel. " The rocks were their 
pillows," yet "rest was pleasant." Their sentries, posted at 
some distance forward, " heard the enemy singing at the 
fort, who continued that strain till midnight with great in- 
sulting and rejoicing," for, having seen the pinnaces sail 
by them some days before, they believed that the English 
were "afraid and drn-st not come near them." 

Soon after daylight the men were roused. " Briefly 
commending themselves and their design to God," they 
were prepared immediately for the assault. Only two 
miles more were to be covered before the enemy were met. 



The Pequot Wars 105 

Reaching the foot of a hill, Mason was told that the 
fort was on its top. Now the remnant of the Narragan- 
sett allies had faded from sight. 

The fort consisted of a long palisade strengthened with 
trees and brushwood, elevated above the Mystic River, near 
its head. There were two entrances. Within were clus- 
ters of wigwams occupied by the families of the braves 
and containing their stores. It was decided to force 
both entrances at the same time. Accordingly the army 
was divided. Mason leading one division. Underbill the 
other. Again " commending themselves to God," the ad- 
vance was silently begun. When Mason's band had ap- 
proached within a rod of the entrance chosen for their 
attack, a dog was heard to bark inside the fort. Then 
a startled Indian cry rang out, — " ' Owanux ! Owanux ! ' 
which is, ' English ! English.' " Rushing up, the force 
opened fire through the palisade ; then, wheeling, fell 
upon the entrance, the bulky Mason at the head clambering 
over brush breast-high which blocked it. The surprise 
was comjjlete. The fighting men were in heavy sleep pro- 
longed by their night's feasting and dancing when the Eng- 
lish were upon them. Dazed by the suddeness of the on- 
slaught, they caught up their weapons for defence, but too 
late. Encountering no Indian at the entrance. Mason 
strode forward to the first wigwam. Entering, he was be- 
set by a number who had been here concealed watching 
his movements and ready "to lay hands on him." A hot 
fight ended in their vanquishment ; one Indian was 
killed, the others fled. The captain then passed beyond 
into the lane or street, and followed it toward the end 
where Underbill's division had entered, the Indians Ije- 
tween them scattering and shooting their arrows as they 
ran. Then "facing about," he marched "a slow pace" 



106 Connecticut River 

back along the lane, much blown by his exertions. Near 
the entrance he observed " two soldiers standing close to 
the 23alisade with their swords pointed to the ground." 
Joining them he declared that the enemy could never be 
killed off in that way ; " we must burn them ! " And rush- 
ing liack to the wigwam that he had first entei-ed, he 
seized a firebrand and applied it to the dry mats which 
served as covering. Instantly the tent was ablaze, and 
the flames ran fiercely through the enclosure. 

" When [the fire] was thoroughly kindled the Indians ran as men 
dreadfully amazed. And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Al- 
mighty let fall upon their Spirits that they would tiy from us and 
rvm into the very flames, where many of them i»erished. And when 
the Fort was thoroughly fired, command was given that all should 
fall off and surround the Fort which was readily attended by all. 
.... The fire was kindled on the northeast side to windward ; 
which did swiftly overrim the Fort to the extreme amazement of 
the enemy, and great rejoicing of ourselves. Some of them climb- 
ing to the top of the Palisado, others of them running into the very 
flames ; many of them gathering to windward lay pelting at us with 
their arrows, and we repayed them with our small shot. Others of 
the stoutest issued forth, as we did guess to the number of 40, who 
perished by the sword .... 

" Thus were they now at their wits end, who not many hours be- 
fore exalted themselves in their great jiride, threatening and resolv- 
ing the utter ruin and destruction of all the English, exulting and 
rejoicing with songs and dances. But God was above them, who 
laughed his enemies and the enemies of His People to scorn, mak- 
ing them as a fiery oven : Thus were the Stout Hearted spoiled, 
having slept their last sleep and none of their Men could find their 
Hands: Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the 
Place with dead Bodies ! 

" And here we may see the first judgment of God in sending 
even the very night before this Assault 150 men from their other 
Fort to join with them of this place, who were designed, as some of 
themselves reported, to go forth against the English at that ver^' in- 



The Pequot Wars 107 

stant when this heavy stroke came upon them, where they perished 
with their fellows. And thus in little more than one hour's space 
was their impregnable Fort with themselves utterly destroyed to the 
number of 600 or 700, as some of themselves confessed. There were 
only 7 taken captive, and about 7 escaped. Of the EngUsh there 
were 2 slain outright, and about 20 wounded." 

Such is the pious report of the valiant captain. Women 
and children perished in the flames, or in the slaughter. 
No quarter was given. " Bereaved of pity and without com- 
passion," the English struck the frenzied creatures down as 
they attemjDted to escape the awful fire. " Great and dole- 
ful," said Underhill in his narrative, " was the bloody sight 
to the view of young soldiers, to see so many souls lie 
gasping on the ground, so thick you could hardly pass 
along." It was a cruel and barljarous thing. But no 
more cruel and barbarous was it than the warfare that 
" Christian " peoples of our own " enlightened " times have 
waged upon foes we term savages, and probably not so 
fiendish, in the execution, as the fate which awaited the 
white men had the Pequots been successful in their own 
stratagems. 

With the destruction of the fort the fighting was not 
ended. The army, again on the move, headed in the direction 
of Pequot harbor, where then- vessels left at Narragansett 
Bay were to meet them. But there was no certainty that the 
boats would be there. As they marched their way was beset 
by perils. Somewhere, perhaps in their path, was the other 
fort whose warriors might at any moment be upon them. 
Several members of the little force were detailed to carry the 
woimded, and others then- heavy arms, so that only about 
forty were available for action. Then- ammvmition was 
running short. All were weary from the recent conflict. 
The remaining Indian contingent, save Uncas and his men, 



108 Connecticut River 

were of little service to them, but rather a hindrance. 
They had proceeded only a short distance when the officers 
held a consultation as to what course to pursue. At this 
moment, from the high land overlooking the water, their 
vessels were espied sailing " before a fine gale of wind " 
into Pequot harbor. As they were rejoicing at the sight 
they saw the enemy from the other fort coming up the 
hill slope, three hundred or more strong. Immediately 
Mason led out a file or two and advanced upon them, 
" chiefly to try what temper they were in." They were 
soon scattered. Much elated, the army marched on, some 
of the allies now taking the burden of the wounded in 
place of their comrades, thus leaving the latter free for 
action. Shortly the routed Indians were again encoun- 
tered. They had come upon the ruined fort and the ashes 
of its inmates and had been thrown into great rage by the 
sight. Then they had tm-ned about and started back for 
the English, leaping down the hill like a whirlwind upon 
them. Underbill held the rear of the marching army. 
When they had come within musket range his men faced 
about and poured a volley into the shouting horde Some 
were killed ; the rest were made " more wary." There- 
after they hovered around the column, darting in and out 
of cover, from behind trees and rocks, firing their arrows 
much at random. So a rimniug fight was kept up to 
within two miles of the harbor, with but slight hurt to the 
armored English. Here the enemy " gathered together " and 
left them ; while with their colors flying the victors marched 
to the hill-top adjoining the harbor. Seeing then' vessels 
riding at anchor below, "to their great rejoicing," they 
hastened to the water-side and '" there sat down in quiet." 
The homeward journey was made overland, the 
wounded being conveyed by water. With the fleet met in 



The Pequot Wars 109 

Pequot harbor was Captain Patrick of the Bay Colony, who 
had come out in a bark from Boston with forty men. 
Some altercation took place between him and Captain Un- 
derbill ; and Captain Mason was nettled at Patrick's inti- 
mation that he had come to their relief, thinking they were 
being pm-sued by the enemy. Matters, however, were 
amicably arranged ; and the return to Saybrook Fort was 
made without further incident, Patrick accompanying Mason 
on the march through the woods. Reaching the east side 
of the River, the army were " nobly entertained " by Cap- 
tain Gardiner with a salvo of " great guns." The next 
morning they were transported across to the fort, where 
the gallant Gardiner extended fm-ther courtesies to them. 
Then they sailed back to their up-River homes, and 
there were received " with great triumph and rejoicing, and 
praising God for his goodness " in crowning them with 
success and restoring them with so little loss. 

Note was made of various " special providences " in es- 
capes from death by the Indians' arrows. A unique case 
was that of Lieutenant Bull, who "■ had an arrow shot into a 
hard piece of cheese, having no other armoiu: " : upon which 
Captain Mason shrewdly remarked that it might " verify the 
old saying, ' A little armour would serve if a man knew 
where to place it.' " 

But the war was not yet over. The crippled Pe- 
quots were now to be destroyed as a tribe. Soon after 
Mason's army had departed from theu" country they aban- 
doned their remaining fort and their lands, scattering in 
bands. A few sought refuge with depending tribes. The 
great body turned toward Manhattan. Sassacus and sev- 
enty or eighty of his best warriors took the route to the 
Hudson. The flight had scarcely begun when the English 



110 Connecticut River 

were hunting them down. News of the exploit of the 
' Connecticut force, carried to Massachusetts Bay by an In- 
dian runner sent out by Roger Williams at Providence, had 
roused the Eastern colonies. At once the Bay men des- 
patched their main army, recruited for this war, to the 
scene of action. The Plymouth Colony also engaged to 
send an expedition, with Lieutenant Holmes as leader. 
Meanwhile the River government had promptly taken 
steps to occupy the Pequot country. On the 23d of June 
the com't at Hartford ordered that thirty men, " out of the 
three River plantations," be sent to " sett down " therein, 
to " maintain oiu" right that God by conquest hath given 
us." A fortnight or three weeks later the Bay force ap- 
peared in Pequot harbor in a little fleet. It consisted of 
one hundred and twenty men, under Captain Israel Stough- 
ton, with John Wilson, first minister of Boston, as chap- 
lain. Almost simultaneously the Hartford Court ordei-ed 
forward a new company of forty men, under Captain 
Mason, for " further prosecution of the war." This force 
immediately made a junction with Stoughton at Pequot 
harbor. Along with Mason went Ludlow, Haynes, and 
other principal men of the River towns for counsel. 
Miantonomo, the Narragansetts' sachem, and two hundred 
of his warriors, also came to the encampment. Uncas and 
his men, too, were on hand. 

Then pursuit of the wretched fugitives began. En- 
cumbered by their women and children, and scantily pro- 
visioned, their flight was slow. One band, half-famished 
and miserable, were come upon by the Bay men in a se- 
cluded swamp in Groton. Of a hundred taken, the women 
and children, eighty of them, were reserved for bondage ; 
while the men (except two sachems saved for a while be- 
cause they promised to track Sassacus) were " turned into 




Jii. 

o 
o 

1- 

>, 



1) 



O 

o 



The Pequot Wars 111 

Charon's ferry boat imder the command of Skipper Gallop," 
and " despatched " in the sea. The pursuit was followed 
westerly through the shore woods, the vessels sailing along 
the Sound as the troops marched. Our River was crossed 
to Say brook Fort. A few miles beyond, at Menunketuck, 
now Guilford, the captm-ed sachems were beheaded. The 
name, " Sachem's Head," still borne by the Point which 
here reaches into the Sound, denotes the place of their exe- 
cution. At Unquowa, now Fairfield, beyond the Housa- 
tonic's mouth, the final battle took place, the fiercest of 
all. This was the " Great Swamp Fight " in which Sassar 
cus and his braves were encountered, with two hundred 
Indians of the neighborhood. The English won, but Sassa- 
cus with many of his warriors escaped, and fled to the Mo- 
hawks. After this fight the troops returned, Avhile the 
Mohegans and Narragansetts kept up the chase of scattered 
bands, repeatedly bringing in to Hartford and Windsor in 
triumph gory heads of the slain. Sassacus met his fate at 
the hands of the Mohawks soon after joining them, and his 
scalp was sent to Hartford. In September, Ludlow, Pyn- 
chon, and several others journeyed overland to Boston, 
carrying a piece of the dead sachem's skin and a lock of 
his hair ; and these they displayed before the Bay leaders 
as " a rare sight and a sure demonstration of the death of 
their mortal enemy." Then a great day of thanksgiving 
and prayer was held in the three colonies. 

The captured Pequot women and children were distrib- 
uted among the troops. Of those taken to Massachusetts 
some were sent to the West Indies and sold as slaves. The 
remnant of the tribe at length surrendered, and were 
amalgamated with the Mohegans and the Narragansetts. 
Then surviving chief men, through whom the smrender 



112 Connecticut River 

was made, came to Hartford and humbly offered to be ser- 
vants to the English. Only about two himdred adult males 
are said to have been left after eight hundred or more had 
been killed or taken. Their tribal name was blotted out. 
They were never more to inhabit their country. They were 
to pay an annual tribute to the Connecticut Colony, 
their lands were divided Isetween Connecticut and Massa- 
chusetts. The Pequot River subsequently became the 
Thames. Captain Mason was made " public miltary offi- 
cer " of the plantations, and the train band was instituted. 
This complete crushing of a great and domineering 
tribe by a handful of Englishmen had a salutary effect on 
all the other New England Indians, and while troubles 
with them were not wholly banished from the River towns, 
no open war was again had for nearly forty years. It 
cleared the country along Long Island Sound for settle- 
ment, and colonization at points above and below the 
River's mouth aknost immediately followed. 




o 
o 

u 
CO 






IX 

Philip's War in tiie Valley 

The Direful Conflict of 1676-1676 Centering in the Massachusetts Reach — 
Philip of the Wampanoags — The frontier River Towns — Hadley the Mili- 
tary Headquarters — Gathering of the Colonial forces — The "Regicide" 
Goffe perhaps a Secret Observer of the Spectacle — The apocryphal Tale 
of the " Angel of Deliverance " — First Assault upon Deerfield — Northfield 
Destroyed — Fatal March of Captain Beers toward Northfield — The Am- 
buscade on " Beers's Plain " — Ghastly Sight meeting the Gaze of a Relief 
Force — A Sunday Attack upon Deerfield. 

IN the autumn of 1675 the theatre of the so-called King 
Philip's War was transferred from the Narragansett 
country to the Connecticut Valley, centering about the 
frontier settlements of the Massachusetts Reach. This war 
was begun the previous summer with the outbreak of the 
Poconokets, or Wampanoags, led by Philip, or Metacomo, 
son and second successor of that Massasoit who welcomed 
the Pilgrims at their coming, and soon engaged the tribes 
of interior Massachusetts and involved all the New England 
colonies. While Uncas and his Mohegans, with the minor 
tribes within the jurisdiction of the Connecticut Colony, 
remained faithful to and fought together with the whites, 
almost every town in the Valley was endangered, and the 
whole region felt the effect of the conflict of nearly a year's 
duration, direful to the colonies and ruinous to the tribes. 
The Indians of this war were a far more formidable 
enemy than the Pequots thirty-eight years before. Their 
weapons were no longer confined to the arrow, the toma- 
hawk, and the scalping knife. The " lust of gain " on 

113 



116 



Connecticut River 



that a white man's blood was shed. . . . Against his 
judgment and his will he was involved in war." So Ban- 
croft records. Some other historians, assuming that Philip's 
plans were to spring the war a year later, account for 
these tears in his distress at the premature outbreak. The 
argument of Bancroft appears the more reasonable. " For 
what chance had he of success ? The English were imited ; 
the Indians had no alliance. . . . The English had towns 
for their shelter and safe retreat ; the miserable wigwams 
of the natives were defenceless ; the English had sure sup- 
plies of food ; the Indians might easily lose their pre- 
carious stores." The Wampanoags' country had become 
narrowed to the neck or eastern shore of Narragansett 
Bay ; the Narragansetts, ultimately brought into the con- 
flict, were hemmed in on the western shore. Other tribes 
were drawn into the war for similar reasons. " The wild 
inhabitants of the woods or the seashore could not under- 
stand the duty of allegiance to an unknown sovereign, or 
acknowledge the binding force of a political compact; 
crowded by hated neighbors, losing fields and hunting 
groimds . . . they sighed for the forest freedom which 
was their immemorial birthright." 



At the beginning of hostilities in the Valley, Northfield 
and Deerfield were the frontier settlements on the River 
northward, the former but two years old, the latter scarcely 
four. Brookfield, about thirty miles back from the River, 
with the forest intervening, was the nearest settlement 
eastward. Lancaster, on the Nashua River, about twenty- 
five miles northeast of Brookfield, was the next frontier 
Bay settlement. On the west of the River frontier towns 
was the almost unbroken wilderness extending to the Hud- 
son. Westfield, ten miles west of Springfield, was the re- 




A River Fishing Camp — Camp Wopowog, near East Haddam. 



Philip's War in the Valley 117 

motest plantation on this side. Early in the conflict both 
Northfield and Deerfield were abandoned, leaving Hatfield, 
Hadley, and Northampton the frontiers. 

Hadley became the headquarters of military operations 
in the Valley, and in late August and early September of 
1675 the little town of five hundred inhabitants was alive 
with the coming and going of soldiers. There were at one 
time and another during these months, Major Treat with a 
htmdred or more Connecticut troops ; Captain Appleton of 
Ipswich, eastern Massachusetts, commanding Bay men ; 
Captain Thomas Lothrop of Beverly, with his choice com- 
pany, the " Flower of Essex," all " culled " out of the 
towns belonging to that county, Salem, Danvers, Ipswich, 
and the rest ; Captain Richard Beers of Watertown, near 
Boston, with his company of foot and horse ; Lieutenant 
William Cooper with Springfield men ; Captain Samuel 
Moseley of Boston, who had commanded a privateer in 
the waters of the West Indies ; and a body of friendly Mo- 
hegans under a son of Uncas. The higher officers estab- 
lished themselves at the parsonage, where Parson John 
Russell and his competent wife provided generous hospital- 
ity during the campaign, drawing " divers barrels of beer, 
and much wine," and setting forth a bountiful table. 

Looking out, perhaps, upon this martial scene from his 
place of concealment in the minister's house, and, also 
perhaps, longing to have part in it, was the "regicide," 
Goffe, one of the three of the body of judges who con- 
demned Charles I to the block, who had escaped to New 
England upon the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, and, 
finding refuge in Connecticut, had been shifted from place 
to place by their steadfast friends when the agents of the 
crown were after them. 

We say perhaps, for there is not a scrap of trustworthy 



118 Connecticut River 

record associating the old Cromwellian warrior witli this 
momentous time, although he was then concealed in the 
house of the Hadley minister. The story of his miraculous 
apjjearance among the people of Hadley when, at a Fast 
Day service on the first of September, the meeting-house 
where they were gatliered was suddenly surrounded and 
attacked by a body of Indians; of the leadership of the 
venerable stranger, with flowing white locks, and quaint 
garb, in the rout of the enemy ; and of his as miraculous 
disappearance immediately afterward, leaving the awed 
people with the conviction that " an angel from God had 
delivered and saved them" ; — this thrilling story, which 
Scott, Hawthorne, and Cooper, historians, poets, story- 
writers, and orators liave woven in tale and verse and 
impassioned jjassage, must be dismissed as jjure romance. 
Reluctant as is even the bloodless historical investigator 
to abandon it as a substantial historical fact, for there is 
no more inspii'ing tradition in the annals of New England, 
it falls to pieces with the simple search of the records. 
George Sheldon, the Deerfield historian, has applied this 
cold test with fatal results. He found the legend published 
for the first time in Hutchinson's History of Massachu- 
setts eighty-nine years after the "event," and based upon 
an unauthenticated anecdote. It is given in connection 
with Hutchinson's account of the wanderings of the " regi- 
cides," derived from Goffe's diary covering their adven- 
tures for six or seven years. No mention of such an inci- 
dent appears in this diary, and Hutchinson relates it solely 
as " an anecdote handed down through Governor Leverett's 
family." From this and this only the legend evolved in 
print and gained with each nan'ator till it reached the dig- 
nity of an accepted fact of history. Not a hint of it is 
given by the contemporaneous historians of the Indian wars, 



Philip's War in the Valley 119 

nor does it appear in the relations of Connecticut Valley 
families. 

And from a record as slender has developed the circum- 
stantial story of the attack on Hadley at the date given. 
Hubbard in his authorized history of the Indian wars 
makes no allusion whatever to an attack here at that time. 
Nor does Solomon Stoddard, the minister of Northampton, 
mention it in his letter to Increase Mather, minister of the 
Second Chui-ch in Boston, under date of September 15 
(old style), wherein he gives a minute account of the events 
of the preceding three weeks in the Valley towns. In- 
crease Mather alone has this statement in his history of the 
wars : " On the fir.st of September 1675 one of our churches 
in Boston was seeking the face of God by fasting and 
prayer before him ; also that very day the chm-ch in Had- 
ley was before the Lord in the same way but were driven 
from the holy service by a most sudden and violent alarm 
which routed them the whole day after." Hutchinson, 
the next narrator, nearly a centinry later, repeats Mather's 
statement, but enlarges the "alarm" into an "attack." 
Then thirty years after Hutchinson comes President Stiles 
of Yale, in his History of Tliree of the Judges of King 
Charles I, elaborating the "attack" into a battle about the 
meeting-house, and adding the "angel" part to the "true 
story " of Goft'e's appearance, " told," he says, at the time 
he wrote, " in variations in various parts of New England." 
So the wondrous tale grew to its perfection. 

On that first day of September (0. S.) Deerfield was 
violently attacked and burned ; and in this affair Sheldon 
reasonably sees the occasion of the Hadley " alarm " which 
Mather recorded. Some latter day historians and writers 
have fitted the Goffe tradition to a date nine months later, 
or June 12, 1676, when the Indians really did fall upon 



120 Connecticut River 

Hadley, as Hubbard relates in detail. But this theory 
Sheldon shatters as completely as he destroys the tradition, 
by massing these unquestioned facts : that June 12, 1676, 
" was not a Fast Day ; the inhabitants were not assembled 
in the meeting-house ; the attack was made upon a small 
party who had fallen in an ambuscade ; it was made early 
in the morning ; the town was not in a defenceless posi- 
tion," for five hundred Connecticut men under Major Tal- 
cott had recently arrived, joining others ah-eady in the 
village, so that no Cromwellian leader or "angel" was 
necessary for its deliverance. 

Sheldon's refutation of this cherished tradition was 
published thirty years ago. But still the tale is told ; and 
the credulous stranger is confidently shown the spot where 
the "battle" about the meeting-house was fought imder the 
lead of the mysterious captain who appeared " like an 
angel from heaven." The stranger shall see, however, a 
genuine landmark in the site of the parsonage which 
sheltered the mysterious captain. 

The war was precipitated in the River towns by an at- 
tempt to disarm a band of the local Pocumtucks and others 
who had made a pretense of friendliness, but were suspected 
of intention to join Philip's allies concentrating in the 
woods between Hadley and Northfield ; by pursuit of them 
when they fled from their fort in Hatfield and were actu- 
ally on the way ; and by a fight with them in a swamp 
south of Sugarloaf peak, from which they escaped. This 
encounter occurred on one of the last days of August, and 
engaged Captains Lothrop and Beers with their men. 
Earlier small garrisons had been posted at Northampton, 
Hatfield, Deerfield (then Pocumtuck), and Northfield (then 
Squakheag). The fight under the shadow of Sugarloaf 



Philip's War in the Valley 121 

was followed by the first overt act, the attack upon Deer- 
field of September 1 (0. S.). In this affair the settlers had 
barely time to reach the garrison houses before these shel- 
ters were besieged. They were successfully defended, but 
the force was too weak in numbers to sally out and drive 
the enemy. So the savages were able to plunder and burn 
several houses and barns before they left. 

On the very next day, September 2 (0. S.), the outpost 
of Northfield was attacked. This infant settlement then 
comprised a collection of log huts, the central one being 
the meeting-house, sm-rounded by a stockade and fort. The 
enemy sm'prised the settlerswhen they were about their daily 
work. Some were cut down in their houses, others while 
coming from the meadows. Eight were killed. The rest, 
men, women, and children, crowded into the fort, whence 
they witnessed the slaughter of their cattle, the destruction 
of their grain, and the burning of the few houses outside 
the stockade. The following day, unaware of this attack, 
and supposing that the "• hostiles " were now all on the 
west side of the River, Captain Beers was despatched from 
Hadley with thirty-six troopers and a supply train of ox- 
carts, to secure the Northfield garrison. 

Theirs was a fatal journey ending in the first crushing 
disaster of the campaign in the Valley. 

The post was in the wilderness thirty miles distant 
from Hadley. The way to it lay along the east side of the 
River through a forest almost continuous, marked by rough 
wood-paths or trails, where now are the towns of Sunder- 
land, Montague, and Erving. At night the command 
bivouacked in a pleasant spot above Miller's River. The 
next morning, leaving their horses under guard, they con- 
tinued on foot with the supply wagons, having no thought 
of danger in their path. So they marched on unguard- 



122 Connecticut River 

edly to a point within about two miles of their destination. 
Here, in a swampy ravine, the enemy were awaiting them 
in an ambuscade. They fell into the snare without a mo- 
ment's warning, and a considerable number were instantly 
slain. The survivors scattered; but, soon rallied by Cap- 
tain Beers, they made a stand on the side of a hill above 
the ravine. This ground was Ijravely held against an 
overwhelming force till the captain fell. Then the rem- 
nant broke, and, leaving the carts and their wounded be- 
hind, fled back through the forest to Hadley. Of tbe 
thirty-six troopers of the command only sixteen escaped. 
Three taken prisoners were said to have been burned at the 
stake on the battlefield. 

The ground where the trap was sprung is now kno^vn 
in Northfield as " Beers's Plain," and the hill where the 
captain fought to his death is to-day " Beers's Mountain." 
It is an eminence in the range which extends on the 
east side of the town. Here, on the south side, is the 
captain's grave. Both Beers's Plain and the grave are 
now suitably marked by tablets. Beers was au officer, we 
are told, of sterling valor, and a public servant of " approved 
patriotism and usefulness." At the time that he fell he 
was a member of the Massachusetts General Court, where 
he had represented his town for thirteen years. He had 
been in this Squakheag country five years before as a mem- 
ber of a prospecting party. So, as the local historians 
remark, he was among the first of Europeans to see this 
beautiful and fertile tract, and one of the first to be buried 
in its soil. 

Two days after the Northfield disaster, when the sur- 
vivors had returned to camp with their story. Major 
Treat with a hundred dragoons hastened up to succor the 
Northfield force and settlers, and to take them off if any 



« 



J 



Philip's War in the Valley 123 

remained. Coming upon the ground of the fight, the troops 
were startled and most " solemnly affected " by the specta- 
cle of a row of twenty ghastly heads of the dead soldiers 
stuck upon poles set up near the roadside ; and one awful 
figure hanging from the bough of a tree by a chain hooked 
into the under jaw, having the appearance of being thus sus- 
pended while yet alive. The " doleful sight" quickened their 
steps. Reaching the garrison the people were found safe 
inside the stockade where they had been confined for five 
days. The bodies of the slain still lay on the meadow 
where they fell, and a detachment was detailed to bm-y 
them. In the midst of this pious duty the men were sur- 
prised by a volley from neighboring bushes in which Indi- 
ans had ))een skulking, and Major Treat was hit by a 
spent ball. In fear of a general attack the work was ab- 
ruptly stopped, with only one body bm'ied, — that of 
Sergeant Wright of Northampton, the commander of the gar- 
rison, — and preparations were hastened for departure. At 
dusk all were hurried off with what they could carry. On 
the fearsome retm'n march, constantly apprehensive of 
some deadly surprise in the sombre woods, they were 
cheered by an unexpected meeting with Captain Appleton 
coming up with an additional force. He would have them 
tm-n ])ack and with the combined forces give the enemy 
chase. But the strain had been too much. The " gi-eatest 
part" advised "to the contrary." So the march was re- 
sumed, and Hadleyat length reached. 

After the English evacuation the Indians burned what 
was left of Northfield, the fort, and the houses. In subse- 
quent periods of the war, the place was a rendezvous of the 
River tribes consorting with Philip. 

"With the abandonment of Northfield, Deerfield became 



124 Connecticut River 

the outermost town. It was now a weak hamlet of a few 
'settlers, much exposed by their situation to the enemy. 
At the outbreak of the war its inhabitants, according to 
Sheldon, numbered about one himdi-ed and twenty-five, of 
whom only twenty-five or thirty were men. The houses 
were scattered the length of the present Deerfield Old 
Street, the pride of the beautiful town. Three of the 
houses were fortified with palisades. These were the gar- 
rison houses or forts. The principal one was the " Stock- 
well Fort" on Meetinghouse Hill, the natural centre of 
the town, where it is now the Common with its monu- 
ments. This was the house of Quintin Stockwell, where 
the minister boarded. The other two garrison houses were 
north and south of it. In both these directions the road 
dropped from the hill into a quagmire, which was covered 
with a causeway of logs. On three sides of the village 
were the deep open meadows spreading north, south, and 
westward to the virgin forest. From the hiUs on the east 
and west every movement in the Valley town could be ob- 
served by the Indian spies. So the post was a difficult 
one to defend. The outlet to the other settlements was by 
way of Hatfield, the nearest plantation, on the south. 

On September 10 (0. S.), shortly after the retm-n from 
Northfield, Captain Appleton was sent up to garrison Deer- 
field with his men. Two days later, on a Sunday, the 
place was again attacked. The preparations for the as- 
sault were stealthily made while the soldiers were collected 
with the settlers in the Stockwell Fort at the Sunday ser- 
vice. In the swamp north of Meetinghouse Hill an am- 
bush was laid to cut off the men of the north garrison upon 
their retm-n. After the service, as a body of twenty-two 
were crossing the causeway, they were fired upon from this 
ambuscade. Only one was wounded, however, and aU 



Philip's War in the Valley 125 

managed to retreat to Stockwell's. Then, turning to the 
north, the enemy intercepted the one sentinel in the north 
fort, and he was " never afterward heard from." Apple- 
ton rallied his men and sallying from his cover succeeded 
in driving the savages from the village. But before this 
was accomplished the north fort had been set on fire, much 
of the live stock had been killed or captiu-ed, and provi- 
sions and other spoils had been taken to the Indian ren- 
dezvous on Pine Hill, north of the Street. 

An " express " carried the news of this affair to North- 
ampton, and by Monday night a party of volunteers, with 
some of Captain Lothrop's company, arrived to the town's 
relief. The next morning the combined forces under 
Appleton's lead marched up to Pine Hill, but to no pur- 
pose, for the savages had fled. That night Captain Moseley 
was despatched from Hadley to strengthen the Deerfield 
garrison. 

Now approached " that most fatal day, the saddest 
that ever befel New England," as Hubbard wrote, — the 
day of the disastrous " Battle of Bloody Brook." 



X 

The Battle of Bloody Brook 

Slaughter of the " Flower of Essex " at South Deerfield while Convoying a 
Provision Train — The Sudden Attack from Ambush by a Swarm of 
Braves — Many of Captain Lothrop's Men idly gathering Grapes by the 
Brookside when the Warwhoop rang out — Desperate After-tight by 
Captain Moseley — Memorials of the Battle — The Legend of "King 
Philip's Chair " — Destruction of Deerfield. 

TTIIS was the calamitous engagement at Bloody Brook, 
ill South Deerfield, less than a week after the Sunday 
raid upon the Deerfield garrison, in which were miserably 
slaughtered the " Flower of Essex," sm-prised by a body 
of nearly a thousand of the enemy in ambush. 

Captain Lothrop had volimteered his command to con- 
voy a provision train laden with a quantity of threshed 
wheat from Deerfield to the headquarters at Hadley. 
This was to be added to the stores for the supply of the 
forces now concentrating at Hadley preparatory to the 
undertaking of aggressive operations in the field, in accord- 
ance with new orders from the council of war at Hartford, 
issued after the Northfield affan. With eighty of his 
picked men Lothrop had reached Deerfield without hin- 
drance, and was on the retiirn march to Hadley with the 
train of ox-carts with Deerfield men as drivers, when the 
trap was sprung. 

The procession, headed by the troops with the string 
of carts following, had filed through Deerfield Old Street, 
passed up Bars Long Hill, and proceeded slowly and 

126 



The Battle of Bloody Brook 127 

carelessly along the old Hatfield road, then the narrow 
Pocumtuck Path through the primeval woods. " Confi- 
dent in their numbers, scorning danger, not even a van- 
guard or flanker was thrown out " by the captain. From 
the top of Long Hill the path, as Sheldon in his Deerfield 
history definitely outlines it, lay through the dense forest 
for a mile and a half ; then approached on the left a nar- 
row swampy thicket trending southward, through which 
the brook crept sluggishly ; then skirted this swamp an- 
other mile to a point where the brook narrowed and turned 
to the right ; here crossed the brook diagonally, leaving the 
marsh on the right. The soldiers had reached thus far 
and halted on the other side of the brook while the teams 
behind were slowly dragging then- heavy loads through 
the mire. So care-free were they that many of them put 
their guns in the carts and left the path to gather the 
luscious grapes then in abundance on the wayside. These 
" proved dear and deadly grapes to them," says Mather. 
For close by, as Sheldon pictures, " the silent morass on 
either flank was covered with grim warriors prone upon 
the ground, their tawny bodies indistinguishable from 
the slime in which they crawled, or their scarlet plmnes 
and crimson paint from the glowing tints of the dying 
year on leaf and vine. Eagerly, but breathless and still, 
they waited the signal." The hidden mass of near a thou- 
sand comprised Nipmucks, Philip's Wamjjanoags, and the 
local Pocumtuck clans, led by the sachems who had di- 
rected the surprise at Northfield. Suddenly the fierce war- 
whoop rang in the ears of the astonished Englishmen, and 
a murderous volley burst from the morass. 

A considerable n-umber dropped at the first fire. Lothrop 
held to the theory of fighting Indians in their own way. 
Quickly recovering from the surprise, he apparently directed 



128 



Connecticut River 



his men to take to the cover of the nearest trees and pick 
off the enemy, each singling out his man, after the Indian 
mode of warfare. At the first assault the '' godly and 
courageous commander" himself fell fighting, leaving the 
command without a head. Almost immediately they were 
smTOunded. And so the fine, brave fellows, " none of 
whom was ashamed to speak with the enemy in the gate," 
were miserably crushed by overwhelming numbers, and 
finally sank, " one great sacrifice to the tomahaAvk." 
Only seven or eight escaped the dreadful onslaught. Of 
the Deerfield men who had charge of the carts as teamsters, 
seventeen in all, none survived. 

Captain Moseley, ranging the woods in another direc- 
tion with sixty men, heard the firing and hastened to the 
scene. When he arrived the massacre was complete, and 
many of the victors remaining on the field were stripping 
the dead and plundering the carts. Charging into the 
disorganized mass, he drove them from their prey. Some 
of the eastern Indians among them recognized him, and 
as they stood off with the rest dared him to combat. 
"Come, Moseley, come," they shouted derisively, "you 
seek Indians, here's Indians enough for you!" With his 
force in a compact body he at once " swept through them, 
cutting down all within the reach of his fire." Thus he 
fought for five or six long hours, checking all attempts of 
the Indians to surround his men, or get at the wounded. 
Still he was unable to rout them or keep them long off their 
rich plunder. At length, when about to withdraw from 
the unequal conflict, relief suddenly came. Major Treat 
appeared with a hundred Connecticut soldiers, and a band 
of Mohegans led by a son of Uncas. Treat had been 
marching up from Northampton, and on the way had 
heard the firing. Following the sound he came upon the 



The Battle of Bloody Brook 129 

conflict. With his arrival the enemy broke. They were 
pursued through the woods and swamps till nightfall 
ended the chase. Moseley's loss in the day's engagement 
was slight. 

The imited forces marched back to Deerfield with the 
wounded, and spent the night there. The next morning, 
Sunday, they returned to the field to bury the dead. 
Scouts were sent out and sentinels posted to prevent a siu-- 
prise while the work was in progress. A common grave 
was dug some rods from the fatal morass, and here the 
" Flower of Essex " were buried with a soldier's tribute. 

The spot where the attack began was marked with a 
little wooden monument by the settlers who came in after 
the close of the war, and the sluggish stream was given 
the crimson name it has since borne. A century and a 
half later, the common grave of the slain was identified and 
marked by a flat stone, which one may now see in a front 
yard close to the sidewalk of the South Deerfield main 
street. At the same time the present monument, a shaft 
of stone, was erected to mark the battlefield. This monu- 
ment stands near the edge of the morass in which the 
Indians formed then ambuscade. It was at the laying of 
the comer-stone, on the 30th of September, 1835, that 
Edward Everett delivered his oration on the Battle of 
Bloody Brook, passages from which school-boys of past 
generations have eloquently declaimed. To the same 
occasion, Mrs. Sigoiu-ney, the " bard of Hartford," contrib- 
uted a poem. At subsequent observances of the anniver- 
sary the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, nephew of the first 
orator, and William Everett, the orator's son, contribvited 
poems which survive in the literatm-e of the Valley. The 
modern electric car, thundering through the peaceful vil- 
lage, between Deerfield and Hatfield and Northampton 



130 Connecticut River 

below, skirts the scene of " Bloody Brook," and passes 
close by the quaint monument inscribed with its story. 

On the face of South Sugarloaf, in a recess in the 
cliif below a great shelf of rock jutting out from the front, 
is the sheltered "King Philip's Chair," whence, as runs 
the tradition of the Valley, the great chieftain beheld the 
affau- at the brook, of his planning. But as Sheldon, 
best of authorities, asserts, " there is no evidence that 
Philip was present, and the probabilities are against it." 
Still the place and the legend survive, and doubtless will 
survive, fixtures in history, unscathed by the assaults of 
iconoclasts. The spot is most sightly and commands a 
superb sweep of view. In the little village the sanguinary 
name of the tragic brook is preserved in local titles ; 
most conspicuously appearing on the inn with its vine- 
covered double front piazzas. Standing back from the 
pleasant main street, it bears some resemblance to the 
country tavern of simpler days than these, which we term 
and sometimes welcome as old-fashioned. | 

While Captain Moseley and Major Treat were on. the 
battle-ground with their men engaged in burying the 
dead, Deerfield was having another experience with the 
enemy. A lot of them were passing by the garrison in 
an attempt to retm-n to the prey at the brook. As a 
challenge they hung up in sight of the garrison some 
English garments probably taken from the bodies of the 
slain in the battle. But Captain Appleton frightened 
them away by the clever and not uncommon stratagem of 
causing his trumpeter to sound a call as if summoning 
troops in reserve. Three or four days later Deerfield was 
finally abandoned. The troops were ordered back to 
Hadley, and the inhabitants were scattered in the several 



^r9 




f^ 



Hi: 



The Battle of Bloody Brook 131 

towns below. Shortly after the Indians wholly destroyed 
the settlement. 

The eventful month of September closed with a series 
of sporadic attacks in various sections. On the 26th 
(0. S.) Major Pynchon's farmhouse, barns, and crops on 
the west side of the River opposite Springfield were burned. 
On the 28th two Northampton men, " Praisever Turner 
and Uzackaby Shackspeer," were killed, when outside 
that village to cut wood. " The Indians cut off their 
scalps, took their arms, and were gone in a trice." On 
the 30th (0. S.) Pynchon wrote from Hadley to Governor 
Leverett in Boston, " We are endeavoring to discover y^ 
enemy, dayly send out scouts, but little is effected. We 
find y« Indians have their scouts out. . . . We are waiting 
for an opportunity to fall upon y« Indians if the Lord 
please to grant it to us." The war councils were plan- 
ning a general movement to clear the Valley of the 
enemy. It was proposed to regain the Northfield post 
and establish headquarters there for the Connecticut troops. 
The commissioners at Boston were arranging to send out 
a flying army of a thousand men. 

At the same time Philip's chieftains were planning a 
wider campaign. The settlement at Springfield was marked 
next for destruction. The " hostiles," now in alliance with 
the Springfield Indians, were gathering in force in a hid- 
ing place about six miles from the town, ready at the word 
to spring on their foe. 



XI 



The Burning of Springfield 

With Pledges of Fidelity the Agawam Indians concoct a " Horrible Plot " — 
Bands of Philip's Warriors secretly admitted to the Indian Fort on the 
Outskirts of the Town — A Night Alarm — Early Morning Attack upon 
Messengers Riding out to Reconnoitre — The full Pack soon upon the Village 
— The People crowding the Garrison House — A wild Scene of Havoc with 
the Town in Flames — Major Pynchon's Forced March from Hadley to its 
Relief — Grave After-events. 

THE Springfield or Agawam Indians had been the 
staunchest friends of the English. At the outbreak 
of Philip's War they had made pretentious display of 
their loyalty, and were implicity trusted by the colonists. 
Wequogan, their chief, had given hostages for their fidelity 
who were quartered at Hartford under slight guard. On 
October 3 (0. S.), the pledges were renewed with much 
show of sincerity while they were secretly plotting a rising. 
The following day, under orders, but against his judgment, 
Major Pynchon started off with the garrison for the head- 
quarters at Hadley, thus leaving the town entirely unpro- 
tected. The only other troops in the immediate region 
were Major Treat's command at Westfield, back from the 
"West side of the River. Just before Pynchon's departure 
Wequogan had cunningly withdrawn his hostages from 
Hartford ; and after nightfall, when the troops were all 
gone, some three hundred of Philip's warriors were se- 
cretly admitted to the Indian fort. 

This fort was on Long Hill, about a mile south of the 

132 



The Burning of Springfield 133 

centre of the settlement. It is supposed to have stood on 
a plateau at the head of a ravine which extended from the 
top of the hill. Its presumed site is now pointed out on 
the way to Longmeadow. Springfield then spread along 
the west side of a single thoroughfare, now the Main 
Street, running north and south less than three miles, each 
house-lot extending from the street to the River. It com- 
prised not over forty-five dwellings. Chief among these 
was Major Pynchon's house, standing just north of the 
present Fort Street. His was the only brick house, the 
others being wooden, mostly with thatched roofs. It was 
the principal one of three fortified houses : the other two 
situated near the southerly end of the single street. The 
minister's house stood near the head of the present Vernon 
Street. The principal landing place on the River was at 
the foot of Elm Street, off the present Court Square. 

The rising was timed for early morning of the 5th (0. 
S.). But most unexpectedly the scheme was divulged the 
night before, delaying its execution a few hours. The dis- 
closiue was cm-iously made at Windsor twenty miles down 
the River. A friendly Indian, Toto by name, domesticated 
in the home of Oliver Wolcott there, had become possessed 
of the secret, and " it stirred the very depths of his na- 
ture." His agitation was so intense as to disquiet the 
family. Urged to tell what troubled him he finally let out 
the whole " horrid plot." Immediately Wolcott despatched 
messengers on horseback, one to warn Springfield, the 
other to inform Major Treat at Westfield. The swift rider 
for Springfield entered the town at midnight, and roused 
the villagers with his startling tale. All fled with their 
portable belongings to the garrisoned houses. Pelatiah 
Glover, the minister, removed his " brave library," one of 
the best in the Valley, to the Pynchon house. 



134 



Connecticut River 



The night wore on without event, and the morning 
opened peacefully. No sign appeared of a hostile move- 
ment, nor a single threatening Indian. Therefore the 
peojjle felt assm-ed that the night alarm was a false one, 
and most of them prepared to return to their own homes. 
The minister set the example and carried his library back 
to the parsonage. Meanwhile Lieutenant Thomas Cooper, 
who for some reason had remained in the village, started 
off for the Indian fort, to learn the situation there. He 
had discredited the Windsor report and was firm in the 
belief that the Agawams were txue. He had long been on 
friendly terms with the tribe, and for a quarter of a cen- 
tury had been a familiar figure among them. With him 
went Thomas Miller, the town constable. The two men 
rode their horses at a brisk pace down the town street and 
toward Long Hill. A quarter of a mile beyond the most 
southerly house they entered the woods which then sku'ted 
the settlement. Suddenly shots came from an ambuscade. 
Miller was instantly killed. Cooper fell from his horse 
mortally wounded. But being " an athletic and resolute 
man," although nearing sixty, he contrived to pull himself 
up into the saddle again. Turning his horse he dashed 
back at fuU speed to give the alarm. A horde of savages 
leaped from their ambush and ran after him, firing as they 
ran. He was hit by another ball, and had barely reached 
the Pynchon house when he expired. 

Soon the whole force of " hostiles " from the fort were 
upon the settlement. The inhabitants again managed to 
get under cover of the fortified houses, and from the loo}> 
holes looked out upon a wild scene of havoc. They saw 
their unguarded homes and their barns filled with winter 
stores plundered and set afire ; and shortly nearly the 
whole town in flames. The trusted chief, Wequogan, was 



The Burning of Springfield 135 

seen to be the " ringleader in word and deed." Another 
sachem loudly proclaimed that he "was one who had 
burned Quaboag [Brookfield] and would serve them the 
same way." Shots were exchanged between the Indians 
and the men in the fortified houses, and several of the as- 
sailants fell. One savage was using as a shield a large 
pewter platter taken from a dwelling, which marked him 
as a target. He received a mortal wovmd from a bullet 
smashing through it. Of the townspeople one woman was 
killed. She was the wife of John Matthews, the drummer, 
who had gone off with the garrison soldiers. Five others 
were wounded, one mortally. Within a short time thirty- 
two of the forty-five dwellings were in ashes. The minis- 
ter's house went down with his "brave library." All the 
barns, twenty-four or twenty-five of them, were in flames. 
Major Pynchon's grist and corn mills were bmned. Most 
of the corn in the town stored for the winter was consumed. 
Early in the forenoon Major Treat with his Connecticut 
troops reached the west side of the River. Five brave men 
left their cover, probal)ly the Pynchon house, to help his 
command across. Though pursued by twenty Indians they 
got a boat to the opposite shore. It was quickly filled 
with some of Treat's soldiers, but the Indians on the east 
bank held them at bay, and they durst not ventme over. 
Relief, however, was hastening forward from another di- 
rection. Major Pynchon, informed of Toto's story by a 
messenger sent out at the midnight alarm, was hurrying 
back from Hadley with two hundred men. Major Apple- 
ton was with them as second in command. Marching so 
rapidly that all were put " into a violent sweat," they ar- 
rived upon the scene at mid-afternoon. Till their approach 
the devastating work had gone on practically unchecked. 
But when they entered the biu-ning town the assailants had 



136 



Connecticut River 



all vanished. Their spies had signalled the coming of the 
"soldiers by '' hoops [whoops] or watchwords." Now Major 
Treat's force came across the River and joined Major Pyn- 
chon's men eager to give chase to the enemy. Scouting 
parties were at once sent out, and the woods were scoured. 
But not a brave was discovered. Their fort was deserted, 
and no trace of a new rendezvous could be found. Their 
tracks pointed in various directions manifestly with the 
design of throwing pm-suers off the track. It was a 
masterly retreat, planned, as was the attack, later histori- 
ans conclude, by Philip. It is assumed that he retui-ned 
with his clan and part of the Pocumtucks to the Narragan- 
setts' country, with a new plan to involve that tribe in the 
war ; while the other bands worked their way back to their 
fastnesses about the deserted Deerfield and Northfield. 
The number engaged in the Springfield attack was given 
by the messenger to Pynchon as five hundred ; the Spring- 
field Indians, warriors, women, and children, numbered 
about two hundred. 



Now of the upper River towns only Northampton, Had- 
ley, and Hatfield remained undespoiled, and the Connecticut 
towns below were imperiled. Two days after the fall of 
Springfield an alarm was raised in Glastonbury by the dis- 
covery of " hostiles " hovering about its neighborhood. 
They were probably of Philip's band on their way to the 
Narragansetts. Major Treat was then ordered back to 
Hartford for the protection of the lower towns. All was 
anxiety throughout this region. To stimulate the Mohe- 
gans to greater activity the Hartford government offered 
liberal bounties for scalps of the "hostiles" brought in. 
Men in the threatened towns went out in large parties toj 
harvest the late crops, and to store the grain in safe places, 



The Burning of Springfield 187 

while provision was made for the security of the women 
and children. 

In ruined Springfield a strong disposition was manifest 
to abandon the place. This Major Pynchon deplored, for 
its desertion would encourage the " insolent enemy " and 
" make way for giving vip all the towns above." Governor 
Leverett at Boston took a similar view. It " would be a 
more awful stroke that hath such a consequence as to 
break up a church and town," he wrote. But he could 
only advise that the matter be left " to the Lord, directing 
you on the place." Pynchon, sorely distvirbed, asked to 
be relieved of his military command, his own and the 
townspeople's affairs requiring his undivided attention. 
The request was granted, and Captain now Major Apple- 
ton succeeded him as commander-in-chief. Pynchon re- 
peated his plea for the constant garrisoning of all the 
towns. The sack of Springfield was an awful instance of 
the result of the withdrawal of a guard. The Bay council, 
however, still clung to the policy of combined operations 
in the field. But no town was again left wholly unprotect- 
ed. Major Appleton left a good guard at Springfield, 
imder Captain Sill, when he marched back to headquarters 
at Hadley. At Northampton Captain Sully was stationed 
with a small body ; and Captain Moseley at Hatfield. So 
Springfield was not abandoned ; the " awful stroke " that 
its desertion would entail was averted ; and the settlement 
slowly recovered from its affliction. 

With the advance of October, however, affairs grew 
steadily graver in the River towns and to the westward. 
The enemy appeared to be threatening nearly every settle- 
ment from Hartford to the frontier. Immediately upon 
his return to Hadley Major Appleton sent out scouting 



138 



Connecticut River 



parties to seek the enemy's hiding places. On the 15th 
(0. S.) he himself marched out with almost his entire force, 
bound for Northfield, his scouts having learned that they 
were collected there. But when two miles on the way 
word came that Moseley's scouts had reported great num- 
bers assembled about Deerfield. Accordingly he changed 
his course and crossed the River to Hatfield. Thence a 
night expedition to Deerfield was attempted. Early on 
the march the report of a gun and distant Indian shouts 
warned the vanguard that the movement was discovered. 
So a hurried return was made to secure the defenceless 
towns. Next evening an urgent call for help came to 
headquarters from Northampton, which was threatened ; at 
the same time Moseley reported the enemy within a mile 
of Hatfield. 

That night Moseley made a reconnoissance, but without 
result. He discovered, however, through an Indian captive, 
a great plot. A simultaneous attack upon Hatfield, Had- 
ley, and Northampton had been planned, and a large body 
of Indians were in the scheme. This captive was a poor 
old squaw who had been taken at Springfield after the 
burning. The record of her cruel treatment is one of the 
great black blots on the annals of colonial warfare. 

On the margin of a letter to the governor at Boston re- 
porting this plot, Captain Moseley wrote : " The aforesaid 
Indian was ordered to be toume in peeces by dogs & shee 
was so delt withall." What was the woman's crime, if 
any other than association with a treacherous foe, that 
brought upon her such an awful fate after she had divulged 
her important information and so put the English on guard, 
no record tells. Nothing in contemporary papers is found 
in mitigation of such a barbarous act by civilized men. 
The grim postscript to the Indian fighter's letter appears 



The Burning of Springfield 139 

alone in the docmnents. The historian of Springfield de- 
clines to believe that the evil deed was done by order of 
the English. He would more readily accept a story that 
the squaw had retou-ued to her people and suffered death 
for serving the colonists. But Moseley's postscript too 
definitely fixes the act on the whites. We know that dogs 
were employed in colonial Indian warfare. At the outset 
of this war the use of bloodhounds was proposed to hunt the 
enemy down. Later Parson Stoddard of Northampton, 
ordinarily kind of heart, earnestly urged this measure upon 
Governor Dudley, justifying it on the groimd that the 
savages were like wolves in their conduct, and should be 
dealt with as wolves. Subsequently, in 1706, in Queen 
Anne's War, the Bay General Court offered bounties for 
raising and training war-dogs, and established the rank of 
hunt-sergeant for the military officer having charge of packs 
of hounds in ranging the woods for Indians. 

At about the same time that Moseley learned from the 
captm-ed squaw of the proposed combined attack upon the 
three frontier towns, the Hartford government was startled 
by word from Andros in New York of a plot for a general 
uprising of all the Connecticut Indians. Five or six thou- 
sand of them, Andros wrote, designed " this light moon " 
to attack Hartford and points westward so far as Green- 
wich. Thereupon Hartford and the other places indicated 
were fortified and troops were raised for defence. Thus 
this plot, if it existed (and the historians generally accept 
the report as true), was frustrated. 

From another direction came a definite report of 
Philip's new schemes in the Valley campaign. Roger 
Williams, writing from Providence to Governor Leverett 
at Boston, told of hearing of Philip's great design, — to 
draw Captain Moseley and others " by trayning, and 



140 Connecticut River 

drilling, and seeming flight," into " such places as are full of 
long grass, flags, sedge &c. and then environ them round 
with fire, smoke, and bullets." " Some say," he added, 
" no wise soldier will be so catcht." 

But several of Moseley's mounted scouts were just so 
" catcht." It was in a manoeuvre preceding an attack in 
force upon Hatfield, according to the plan which the cap- 
tive squaw had divulged to Moseley. On October 19 (0. S.) 
at noon, fires were observed in the wQods about Sugar- 
loaf, and the troopers sent out to reconnoitre. Two miles 
from the town they fell suddenly into a trap for which 
the fires were the bait. Six were killed, and three taken 
prisoners. Only one escaped, and he was an Indian. Gallop- 
ing back to Hatfield, he gave the alarm, which was repeated 
to Major Appleton at Hadley. 

The attack upon Hatfield followed at about four of the 
October afternoon. It was met in imexpected fashion. 
Major Appleton coming over had taken a post at the south 
end of the town ; Captain Moseley occupied the middle ; 
and Captain Poole the north end. The enemy began the 
assault from all quarters. But at each point they were 
checked by the English fire, and their every attempt to 
break in upon the town was resisted. The contest con- 
tinued hotly for two hours. Then Major Treat coming up 
from Northampton with a force of Connecticut men, the 
finishing blow was given, and the enemy broke and fled. 
Their loss had been considerable, while that of the English 
was light. Three of the English were carried off as pris- 
oners. One of these unhappy men was afterward horribly 
tormented and at length put to death. " They burnt his 
nails, and put his feet to scald against the fire, and drove 
a stake through one of his feet to pin him to the groimd." 



The Burning of Springfield 141 

The Hatfield experience was a great surprise to the In- 
dian war-chiefs, and changed their plans. Instead of fur- 
ther efforts to wipe out the towns by direct attack with 
large bodies, it was decided to break up into small bands 
and harass the settlements, kill, pillage, and burn as chance 
offered. During the next fortnight this coiu-se was pursued 
to some extent. In Northampton several houses and barns 
were burned. A few days later a group of farmers gather- 
ing crops in the Northampton meadows were fired upon 
and three killed. Two days before, Major Pynchon and 
several companions, returning to Springfield from Westfield, 
were caught in an ambuscade. Three were shot down ; 
the rest escaped. Later a band were again prowling about 
Hatfield, but approaching soldiers frightened them off. 

With the opening of November the woods for ten or 
twelve miles roundabout were scoured by troopers, but no 
enemy were found. They were now gone into winter 
quarters, mostly northward and westward. The campaign 
for this season was ended in the Valley, to be renewed the 
next spring. By mid-November the army withdrew from 
headquarters, leaving garrisons in each of the towns. 



XII 



The Rising of the Narragansetts 

Canonchet drawn into Philip's War — Flight of his Tribe toward the Valley — 
Ravages of Frontier Towns on the Way — The great Indian Rendezvous 
about Northfield — Attacks upon Northampton, Hatfield, and Longmeadow 

— Death of Canonchet : A Hero of his Race — The Great Falls Fight : An 
English Victory followed by a Disastrous Rout. — A Chaplain's Experience 

— Final Attacks upon Hatfield and Hadley — End of Philip's War — 
Death of Philip, deserted and betrayed — Results of the War to the 
Colonists. 



FIVE days after the burning of Springfield Philip 
reached the Narragansett country, " loaded with 
spoils from the English." Less than four weeks later the 
colonies declared war against the Narragansetts. The 
''young prince" of this tribe, Canonchet, son of Mian- 
tonomah, had as yet committed no overt act of hostility, 
but he was under suspicion and believed to be yielding to 
Philip's influence. He had, indeed, broken the treaty of 
neutrality forced from him at the beginning of Philip's 
War by the commissioners of the colonies " with a sword 
in their hands," in defiantly sheltering and refusing to 
surrender fugitive "hostiles." But this had been done 
openly, and with the emphatic declaration that he would 
not give up a Wampanoag, not even " the paring of a 
Wampanoag's nail." The colonial councils determined 
upon a winter's campaign in the hope of crushing the 
tribe with a quick stinging blow, when they were least pre- 
pared to parry it. For the winter was the Indians' hibernate 
ing season ; and the frozen swamps made their fastnesses 

142 



Rising of the Narragansetts 143 

more accessible to beseigers. Accordingly an army of a 
thousand men, one-half of them troopers, was immediately 
levied, and set in motion for this adventiire. Five com- 
panies under Major Treat were Connecticut's quota. Early 
in December Major Treat left the Valley with three him- 
dred Connecticut troops and half as many Mohegans. 
Major Appleton was appointed commander-in-chief of the 
Bay forces. Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, sou 
of the first Governor Winslow, was named chief of the 
combined army. 

Meanwhile the people of the Valley towns were living in 
a continual state of imeasiness. Attack from below, by way 
of the Narragansett coimtry, was constantly feared. The 
season was largely spent in fortifying houses and in build- 
ing stockades around the towns. The palisades were sim- 
ple constructions of cleft wood, designed to break the force 
of a sudden assault rather than to serve as substantial de- 
fences, though, as after events showed, they did elfectively 
fill the latter pm-pose. 

The upper route eastward by the Bay Path was early 
closed by the hostile Nipmucks, and tidings from the new 
seat of war were received only through the soldiers in the 
Narragansett campaign. News therefore of the outcome 
of the expedition travelled slowly to the River towns. At 
length they learned of the downfall of the Narragansett 
stronghold in the "• Great Swamp Fight" of December 19 
(0. S.) in what is now South Kingston, Rhode Island, and 
of the scattering of the broken and infuriated tribe through 
the woods northward into the Nipmuck country, just as 
the Wampanoags had been shattered and dispersed with the 
opening onslaught of Philip's war. In this second and 
greatest " Swamp Fight " all the horrors of the Pequot 
massacre were repeated with the storming of the Indian 



144 Connecticut River 

fort. The wigwams, " at least five hundred in number," 
were set afire, and many old warriors, women, and children 
perished in the flames ; the winter's stores were consumed ; 
and of four thousand Indians estimated to have been in the 
fort, nearly two-thirds were killed, burned, or captured. 
But the English losses also were heavy, with six captains 
among the slain. 

There soon followed the news of the junction of the sur- 
viving Narragansetts with the Nipmuck " hostiles " and a 
remnant of Philip's men ; then startling reports of ravages 
of frontier Massachusetts settlements on the road to Con- 
necticut. In February came the destruction of Lancaster, 
with the slaughter of most of the men of its fifty or sixty 
families, and the capture of the women and children, in- 
cluding Mrs. Rowlandson, the minister's wife ; ten days 
after, the partial destruction of Medfield, farther eastward ; 
the next day, the attack upon Weymouth, nearer Boston. 
Five days later followed the first attack upon Groton ; 
after an interval of a week, a second assault, and four days 
later a third, so disastrous that the town was deserted. 
At the opening of March the enemy were again gathered 
in force in the Valley, this time northward, at the chief 
rendezvous at Squakheag, where had been Northfield, and 
whose territory included the present Vernon, Vermont 
side, and Hinsdale and Winchester, New Hampshire. 

Major Thomas Savage of Boston was now sent up from 
the east with companies of foot and horse to join with the 
Connecticut forces in again protecting this frontier. In a 
fortnight hostilities had reopened in the Valley. 

A formidable spring campaign had been planned by 
the Indian chiefs in council in the northern camps. Shel- 
don gives the scheme in fullest detail. The Pocumtucks 



Rising of the Narragansetts 145 

and Wampanoags, with new allies, — young warriors from 
the Mahicans and the Mohawks of the west, and some In- 
dians from Canada, — were to rendezvous at Squakheag 
and thence sweep down upon the Valley towns in large 
bodies, while the Nipmucks and Narragansetts were simul- 
taneously to ravage the Bay frontiers eastward, so heading 
off aid from that quarter. Thus the Valley was to be 
speedily cleared of the English. With this accomplished, 
headquarters were to be established about Deerfield, " the 
non-combatants collected, the fields planted with Indian 
com, and a winter's stock of fish laid up from the abim- 
dance of the streams." The victors were to be under the 
protection of the French, who were to come down from 
Canada and settle among them in place of the English. 
With the driving of the English from the Valley the 
" traitorous Mohegans " would be annihilated. This great 
scheme, however, the too artful Philip spoiled through 
his overreaching diplomacy. After the Narragansetts had 
been drawn in he bent his energies to embroiling the fierce 
Mohawks. He had so far reconciled them with the Pocum- 
tucks whom they had fought, that they agreed to join in 
warring against the Mohegans ; but they would not consent 
to fight the English. Thereupon the cunning diplomat, 
with the unscrupulousness that has sometimes distinguished 
the modern kind, played his trump card. Secretly causing 
a number of Mohawks to be killed, he accused the English 
of their mm'der. But the result which he counted upon 
failed to follow, through an extraordinary happening. 
One of the victims, supposed to be surely dead, revived, and 
reaching his people reported the true circumstances of their 
vmdoing. Enraged at the trick, the Mohawks fell upon 
the tribes in the Pocumtucks' camp, killing and capturing 
many. Thus an old enemy was newly aroused instead of 



146 



Connecticut River 



won as an ally, and the union of all the clans in a common 
cause made impossible. After the Mohawk attack Philip 
and the discomfited Pocumtucks fled to the Sqaukheag 
rendezvous, which they reached toward the close of Feb- 
ruary. 

There were now in the Squakheag camps, Canonchet, 
— young, able, haughty, tall and commanding, with the 
" well-knit form of an athlete " ; twelve hundred of his 
Narragansett warriors and then* sachems ; bands of Nip- 
mucks ; Philip and the chief men of his tribe ; the sur- 
vivors of the Pocumtuck confederation ; a few western 
volimteers ; some Abenakis from the east and north ; and 
a number of the apostate Christians from the Bay towns 
of " Praying Indians " — those " pious lambs " who " proved 
the worst wolves of the whole bloody crew." Canonchet 
was the real leader. 

Such were the swarms collected and making ready for 
action when on March 2 (O.S.) Major Savage's forces joined 
those of Major Treat at Brookfield. In Major Savage's 
command again came Captain Moseley, now Avith a com- 
pany of infantry. Major Treat had three or four com- 
panies, foot-soldiers and troopers. After a few days spent 
in beating the woods about Brookfield on the trail of the 
Narragansetts, but meeting none, Major Savage moved up 
to Hadley, and Major Treat to Northampton. Captain 
William Turner of Major Savage's forces, was stationed 
with his company at Northampton ; and Captain Moseley 
at Hatfield. 

Unaware of these later movements, and so believing the 
River towns to be free from troops, two days after Canon- 
chet's arrival at Squakheag the council of chiefs convened, 
and ordered the opening of the campaign with an attack 
upon Northampton. 



Rising of the Narragansetts 147 

The night before the departure of the force was given 
up to a great war-dance by the braves, while the women 
prepared the supplies for the expedition. Just before day- 
break on the morning of the 14th (O.S.) the enemy arrived 
at the sleeping town, behind the line of palisades erected 
in the winter. Noiselessly the palisades were broken in 
three places and through the gaps thus made the hordes 
crept in. At daylight they began the assault by firing the 
houses. Ten were ablaze before the garrison was fairly 
aroused. Then, to the amazement of the assailants, the 
troops of Major Treat and Captain Turner wei'e upon them. 
Attempting to scatter, they found themselves " as in a 
pound." Panic stricken, they rushed pellmell for the gaps 
by which they had entered, and, under a galling fire, 
tumbled through and incontinently fled. Next they made 
for Hatfield, expecting to find that settlement an easier 
prey. But here they were again confounded by encoun- 
tering Captain Moseley, who gave them a warm reception 
and speedily drove them off. Angered by these repulses, 
they now planned a night surprise upon Northampton. 
At about two o'clock on the morning of the 16th (O.S.) they 
stealthily crept up to the town from two directions. But 
the sentinels discovered their approach and gave the alarm. 
So this game was lost and they instantly vanished. The 
main body returned dejectedly to the Squakheag camps 
taking with them the little plunder that they had secured, 
mainly horses and sheep ; while small bands remained 
behind to hover about the outskirts of the town and harass 
the people whenever and wherever chance offered. 

The failure of the Northampton expedition, with the dis- 
covery of troops again in force in the Valley, gave a radical 
turn to affairs at Squakheag. Philip moved his camp from 



148 Connecticut River 

the west side of the River to the east side where Canon- 
chet's councils were held. A few days later five hundred 
Nipmucks were sent down to Deerfield to guard the Indian 
frontier there. Discontent began to manifest itself in the 
Squakheag camps. This feeling was soon heightened by 
news of the failure of an expedition to Canada for powder 
in exchange for captives taken at Lancaster. The expedi- 
tion had been intercepted on the way by Mohawks, and 
two of the Pocumtucks in it were among the killed. Upon 
Philip alone was charged the new enmity of the Mohawks, 
and the disposition to desert him gained threatening head- 
way. The exhaustion of the winter's stock of provisions 
and the lack of seed for planting added to the distress of 
the situation. Cauonchet advised the occupation of the 
Deerfield meadows for a general planting place. Of seed 
there was a plenty in the " barns " (excavations in the 
earth for storing provisions) at Narragansett, and he en- 
gaged himself to go and obtain a supply of it. With an 
escort of thirty reluctant volimteers, for there was no glory 
and much peril in the adventure, he started at once upon 
this mission. He was never more seen in the Valley. 

While these things were going on in the Indian camps 
the marauding bands, shifting hither and thither in the 
country below, were committing frequent depredations 
about the lower Valley towns. To prevent surprises by 
them, the war council at Hartford devised a system for the 
continual guarding of the settlements. The night watch 
in each town was required to call up its inhabitants every 
morning, " an hoiu- at least before day," who were to arm 
and stand upon guard at assigned posts till the sun was 
half an hour high. Then their places were to be taken 
by the wardens ; while two mounted scouts, one at each 
end of the town, were to spend the day in scouring the 




i 



Rising of the Narragansetts 149 

neighboring woods. At this time the roving enemy toward 
the eastward were creating fresh alarms in Bay Colony 
towns, and also in Pljrmonth Colony. On the 17th of March 
(O.S.) Warwick, Rhode Island, was binned. So alarming 
was the situation becoming that the Bay Colony war 
council advised Major Savage to desert all the Valley 
towns except Springfield and Hadley, and to concentrate 
his strength at these points, "the lesser towns to gather 
to the greater." This advice was sent out from Boston on 
the 20th (O.S.). 

Within a week a series of assaults upon widely separ- 
ated communities happened on a single day. This was 
the 26th of March, a Sunday. In the Valley there was a 
raid upon Windsor ; the plantation of Simsbinry, newly 
formed from the west side of Windsor, was burned ; and 
villagers of Longmeadow, next below Springfield, were 
cruelly assailed. To the eastward, Marlborough in the 
Bay Colony was burned ; and in Plymouth Colony a com- 
pany of Scituate soldiers were massacred in ambush near 
Rehoboth. 

The Longmeadow affair was the most distressing of 
the events in the Valley on this direful day. 

The people attacked were in a cavalcade on their way 
to meeting at Springfield for the first time since the winter 
had set in, for the road through the woods was now deemed 
safe, no " hostiles " having been seen for some time in the 
vicinity. There were sixteen or eighteen men with their 
women and children in the party, under a military escort. 
All were on horseback, the women and children riding 
on pillions. Two of the women hugged infants to their 
breasts. The company were jogging along placidly through 
the wintry woods, strung out in a straggling line, when 
suddenly the rear was surprised by an attack from a 



150 Connecticut River 

neighboring cover at the foot of Long Hill, where the road 
crosses Pecowsic Bi"ook. At the first lire one man, John 
Keep, and a maid were killed, and two men were wounded. 
The two women with the infants, — John Keep's wife, 
Sarah, the other not named in the accounts, — were 
captured and carried off into the woods. Leaving the 
captives to their fate, the escort rushed the cavalcade for- 
ward to a point of safety in Springfield. Then the men 
returned to the scene of the attack but no trace of the 
assailants and their captives could be found. Major Pyn- 
chon also sent out a mounted party of searchers from 
Springfield ; and the next morning sixteen men from Had- 
ley, sent down by Major Savage, joined in the himt. At 
length the tracks were struck, and soon after the party 
were discovered. As the pursuers approached, the culmi- 
nating scene of the tragedy was enacted. The Indians 
seized " the two poor infants and in the Sight of both the 
Mothers and our Men, tossed them up in the Air and 
dashed their Brains out against the Rocks, and with their 
Hatchets knokt the Women, and forthwith fled." Such 
was Major Savage's report. The place being rocky with 
a swamp just by, the pursuers could not follow with then- 
horses, and the savages made good their escape. Poor 
Mrs. Keep died from her wounds and horror at the fate of 
her babe. The other woman lived and gave a report of 
what the captors had told of the enemy's condition and 
plans, which proved of value to the war councils. The 
assailants were all Indians of the Agawam tribe who had 
lived at Longmeadow before the burning of Springfield, 
and their victims were old neighbors. When it was found 
how small their numbers were, the escort of the cavalcade 
came in for sharp censure for running from instead of 
after them. The council at Boston characterized the 



Rising of the Narragansetts 151 

captain's conduct as " a matter of great shame, humbling 
to us." And it inspired this couplet : 

" Seven Indians, and one without a Gun, 
Caused Captain Nixon and forty men to run." 

Through April the enemy were comparatively inactive 
in the Valley, and did their greatest mischief in ravaging 
eastward in the Bay Colony, and in Plymouth Colony. 
Early in the month Major Savage was recalled with the 
larger part of his force by the Bay council, leaving Cap- 
tain Turner in command at headquarters in Hadley, with 
small garrisons at Hatfield, Northampton, and Springfield, 
to guard the inhabitants while at their occupations. Major 
Treat and his troops were drawn off to protect the lower 
Connecticut Colony towns. Meanwhile the government 
at Hartford was advancing overtures for peace with the 
enemy in the Deerfield and Squakheag camps, which over- 
tures had been begun at the close of March. 

While negotiations were pending, runners brought to 
the Squakheag camp from the Narragansett coimtry the 
crushing news of the capture of Canonchet and his execu- 
tion there. This sharply changed the current of things. 
Within a week followed word of the slaughter of several 
counsellors and sachems near the place where the chieftain 
had been taken, which intensified their confusion. 

Canonchet, it appeared, had been seized at the Paw- 
tucket River, Rhode Island, on the second of April, by Con- 
necticut troopers with a band of Mohegans led by Oneko, 
and had been executed the next day by an Indian's hand. 
He had succeeded in his mission, and, despatching his es- 
cort on the return journey with the coveted planting seed, 
had tarried behind to follow later with the fighting men of 
the tribe who were now in that region. The attacking party 



152 



Connecticut River 



surprised him in camp with only six or seven sachems on 
the bank of the Pawtucket. He fled from the overwhelm- 
ing numbers, and casting aside his blanket and the silver- 
laced coat which the Bay leaders had given him as a pledge 
of friendship, sprang into the river. But slipping somehow, 
he fell, and his gan, wet in the fall, became useless. So one 
of Oneko's Indians, who had plunged in after him, effected 
his captvu-e with ease. 

The dignified bearing and the splendid nerve of the 
fallen chief marked him for the first rank among the heroes 
of his vanished race. The first of the English to approach 
and question him was a youth of twenty-one, — Robert 
Stanten, son of the interpreter with the troops. " But the 
chieftain haughtily repelled his advances : ' You too much 
child : no understand war. Let your chief come, him I will 
answer.' He was offered his life on condition of his sub- 
mission; but, 'like Attilius Regulus,' the offer was refused. 
He was then sentenced to die. 'I like it well,' was the 
reply. 'I shall die l^efore my heart is soft, and before I 
have spoken anything unworthy of myself.' " His only 
request was that he might be saved the indignities of tor- 
ture, and his executioner might be Oneko, whom he acknowl- 
edged as a fellow prince. He was taken to Stonington and 
there beheaded by the son of Uncas, who had been the exe- 
cutioner of his father — Miantonomo — thirty-three years 
before. His head was sent to Hartford. 

With the news of Canonchet's fall the Pocumtucks were 
ready to throw up their hands and "to seek peace with the 
head of Philip." Thereupon the cautious Philip moved with 
his followers across country eastward to the fastnesses of 
Mount Wachusett, in Princeton, and established a new ren- 
dezvous there. Passacus, the dead Canonchet's successor 
as chief of the Narragansetts (he was a brother of Mianto- 



Rising of the Narraffansetts 153 



*o 



nomo, and had been regent for twenty years during the 
minority of Canouchet) took charge of the disorganized 
masses remaining in the River camps. Toward the close 
of April their scouting parties were again skulking about 
the towns and taking off horses and cattle. As the spring 
advanced, with the opening of the fishing season, food 
became more plentiful, and confidence was restored among 
the "hostiles." Camps were now scattered along the River 
at the vaj-ious fishing points as far north as the confluence 
of the Ashuelot, in Hinsdale. 

The principal fishing place was at the head of the rapids 
on the right bank of the River, known then as the Great 
Falls, now Turner's Falls. Another important one guarded 
the ford of the Deerfield below. While throngs were fish- 
ing and drying fish to store in the "barns," others were 
planting. On the twelvth of May (0. S.), Passacus, learn- 
ing from his scouts that large herds of stock had been turned 
into the Hatfield meadows to feed, sent out a raiding band, 
and that night some seventy or eighty head of this cattle 
were run off, to the great loss and indignation of the people. 

A week later came the "Great Falls Fight," with an 
English victory followed by a disastrous rout. 

From Thomas Reed of Hatfield and two Springfield lads, 
by name Edward Stebbius and John Gilbert, who had been 
captives of the Indians and had escaped, it was learned that 
the enemy "were carrying themselves imguardedly," on 
account of their knowledge of the withdrawal of troops 
from the frontier towns. Thereupon the people of these 
towns, glad to avenge themselves for the taking of the Hat- 
field cattle, "and other preceding mischiefs," at once raised 
a volunteer force to join with the garrison troops in an 
assault upon the Great Falls camp. Thus were assembled 



154 Connecticut River 

a little company of one hundred and forty-one, composed 
of the garrison men and volunteers from Hadley, Hatfield, 
Northampton, Springfield, and Westfield, under Captain 
Turner, the commander at Hadley. The Rev. Hope Ather- 
ton of Hatfield joined as chaplain. 

On the 18th all were marshalled on Hatfield Street, 
well mounted, and at sunset were ready for the start. 
After a prayer by the chaplain the cavalcade moved off. 
Guided by Benjamin Waite and Experience Hinsdell, they 
made their way cautiously up the Pocumtuck Path ; past 
the gruesome scene of the Battle of Bloody Brook ; along 
the edge of D6erfield ; across Deerfield River above the 
guarded ford ; two miles through the imbroken wilderness ; 
across Green River and along the present Greenfield main 
street, on to a plateau north of Moimt Adams of the Green- 
field hills. Here, within about a mile of their destination, 
they halted to dismount and make the remainder of the 
distance on foot. Leaving their horses with a guard, they 
resumed their march across Fall River, up an abrupt hill, 
and out upon a slope, below which lay the sleeping camp 
at the head of the Falls. 

It was now a little before daybreak. The night before 
the Indians had held a great feast, warriors, women and 
childi-en, all gorging themselves with rich salmon from 
the River, and fresh beef and new milk from the Hatfield 
raid. During the festivities fishers were out in canoes 
spearing salmon by torchlight, till a sudden shower extin- 
guished their torches. The same shower had covered the 
frontiermen's advance. The revels had been carried long 
past midnight, and when the satiated throng lay down to 
sleep, not a sentinel was posted, not a scout was abroad. 
As silently as they had come, the attacking party approach- 
ing the camp at the rear, pressed up to the wigwams and 



Rising of the Nan-agansetts 155 

thrust their guns directly into them. At a given signal 
all fired. Many of the inmates were killed in their sleep. 
The imhm't, awakened in terror, cried out " Mohawks ! 
Mohawks ! " imagining their old enemy upon them ; and 
fled wildly hither and thither. Numbers leaped into the 
River and, carried over the falls, were drowned. Others 
rushed for the canoes and were shot down as they paddled 
or floated away. Others attempted to hide about the 
River's bank and were ruthlessly put to the sword. The 
slaughter was indiscriminate, women and children falling 
with the rest. The wigwams were bm-ned, and provisions 
and ammunition destroyed. Two forges that had been 
used in mending arms were demolished, and " two great 
piggs of lead " for making bullets were cast into the River. 
This was the extent of the victory. To this jjoint it 
was complete, with scarcely any loss to the English and with 
ruin to the Indians. But the victors tarried too long on 
the scene ; then scattered unwisely. Thus fresh Indians 
from other camps — on the opposite bank and at Smead's 
Island below the Falls — were given time to come up and 
gather about them. Drawing off in disorder they mshed 
for their horses with the new horde at their heels. A 
band of twenty chasing some loaded canoes up the River 
were left behind when the retreat began. They fought 
their way back to their horses but were surrounded while 
moimting. One of them, Jonathan Wells, a youth of 
sixteen (the story of whose adventures and hau-breadth 
escapes is an oft told romance of the wars in the Valley), 
managed to break away, though sorely wounded. Catch- 
ing up with the main body he m-ged Captain Turner to 
turn back to then- relief. The Captain could only reply, 
in the desperate strait of his shattered command, " Better 
save some than lose all." Their two guides differed as to 



156 Connecticut River 

the safest route to take on the retreat. So the command 
broke up into bands, some following Waite, some Hins- 
deU, others taking a third course. Those who followed 
Hinsdell were all lost with him in a swamp. Throughout 
the dense forest the fleet-footed enemy " hung like a mov- 
ing cloud on flank and rear" of the fugitives. Turner, 
enfeebled by sickness, became exhausted, and was shot 
down while crossing Green River. With his death the 
lead devolved upon Captain Samuel Holyoke, an intrepid 
young soldier of Springfield. Displaying great courage, 
fighting with vigor when his horse was shot under him, he 
brought something like order into the demoralized ranks. 
But the enemy kept up the piu-suit through the Deerfield 
meadows and along the length of Deerfield Old Street. 

When finally Hatfield was reached and the force was 
mustered, nearly a third were missing, and two of those 
present mortally wounded. Six of the missing straggled 
in later, worn and disheartened. The others were dead. 
The chaplain, Mr. Atherton, was of the latest to come in. 
He had been unhorsed and would have surrendered to the 
Indians ; but they would not receive him, running off 
scared by his parson's garb whenever he approached them 
to give himself up. They thought he was " the English- 
men's God." 

A month after the retreat a band of English scouts 
ranging the woods discovered the body of Captain Tm-ner 
and gave it bm-ial. A few years ago what was l^elieved 
to be Turner's grave was found on the bluff west of where 
he fell, and marked by a tablet. Earlier the Great Falls 
had become Turner's Falls in remembrance of him. The 
scene of the Falls Fight is also marked by a monument. 

The destruction of the Great Falls camp bore heaviest 



Rising of the Narragansetts 157 

upon the Pocumtucks. Their power was now broken be- 
yond recovery. " From this time and place," says Sheldon, 
" they pass into oblivion." 

The mimediate result of this fight was the formation of 
guards and scouts from the militia of the towns systemati- 
cally to cover the frontiers. The system was established 
none too soon, for on the 30th of May the enemy reappeared 
in force at Hatfield, presumably to avenge the Great Falls 
affair. 

Another hot fight here ensued. Seven hundred warri- 
ors comprised the attacking swarm. At first they had 
their own way, driving the few townspeople inside the 
stockade, burning and pillaging houses and barns outside 
the pale, and running off cattle. But soon, in the height 
of the looting, " twenty-five resolute young men," crossing 
from Hadley in a single boat, and fighting off a crowd who 
attempted to prevent their landing, charged upon the ma- 
rauders with signal effect. The gallant twenty-five fought 
their way up to the front of the fort, where, hardest pressed, 
five of them fell. The others were saved by the Hatfield 
men who sallied out to their relief. Then, after more des- 
perate work, the Indians ran. Meanwhile a band had 
made an ambush on the Northampton road to head off 
reinforcements who might appear from that direction, 
while another guarded the Hadley crossing. The latter 
band prevented the crossing of a relief force who had 
come from Northampton by a roundabout way through 
Hadley. When the enemy fled the town they withdrew 
up the River driving the whole Hatfield stock of sheep be- 
fore them. 

With one more assault hostilities in the Valley region 
came to an end. This was the attack of June 12 upon 
Hadley. 



158 Connecticut River 

The Bay Colony authorities, after they had succeeded 
in redeeming a number of the English captives, among 
them Mrs. Rowlandson, but had failed in efforts for peace, 
since the Indian negotiators " did but dally," at length 
joined with the Connecticut government to force Philip 
from his stronghold at Wachusett, and to drive the enemy 
still remaining in the Valley. Two " armies " were ordered 
to come together at Brookfield or at the Hadley headquar- 
ters. Captain Samuel Henchman with four hundred horse 
and foot was ordered up from the Bay ; while Connecticut 
sent forward Major John Talcott with two hundred and 
fifty troopers and two hundred Mohegans under Oneko. 
Talcott set out from the military rendezvous at Norwich, 
Connecticut, on June 2 ; and Henchman started from Con- 
cord, Massachusetts, three days later. Talcott reached 
Brookfield first. He arrived on the 7th, " having killed or 
captured seventy-three Indians on the way." Not ventur- 
ing alone to attack Wachusett, he pushed on to Hadley, 
which he reached next day. Establishing himself at 
Northampton, he sent down to Hartford for ammunition 
and supplies. These arrived on the 10th, convoyed by 
Captain George Dennison (he who had been one of the cap- 
tains at the capture of Canonchet) and his company. 
There were now at or about headquarters in Hadley five 
hundred and fifty men. Captain Jeremiah Swain, who had 
succeeded Captain Turner, was in command of the Hadley 
garrison. Captain Henchman was daily expected, when 
the combined forces would number upward of a thousand. 
Upon his arrival they were immediately to push up to 
Deerfield, where Major Talcott had been told were collected 
five hundred warriors. The main body of " hostiles," 
however, were apparently farther up the River at a place 
provided by Passacus after the Great Falls fight. It is 



Rising of the Narragansetts 159 

presumed that they were aware of Henchman's march from 
the east, but ignorant of the movements of Talcott and 
Denuison, and that the assault upon Hadley was to fore- 
stall Henchman's arrival here. 

For this assault seven hundred warriors swooped down 
from Passacus's new headquarters, and were before the town 
on the morning of the 12th. Strong bands were ambus- 
caded at the north and south ends of the town, and awaited 
the movements of the townspeople. Two men who had 
left the stockade contrary to orders fell among the am- 
bvished band at the south end and were killed. Thus this 
band were discovered to the garrison, and Captain Swain 
instantly sent a force out after them. While they were 
engaged with the garrison soldiers, the band at the north 
end sprang from their ambush. Rushing toward the stock- 
ade they found it lined with soldiers and Mohegans, and 
amazed, fell back in disorder. On the retreat some of 
them tarried to plunder a house, when it was stnick by a 
missile from a small cannon. This was a weapon strange 
and awful to them, and they came " tumbling out in great 
terror." All were now on the run. The soldiers chased 
them for two miles northward. Disheartened by the repulse 
and the discovery of troops returned to the Valley with 
Indian allies, the fugitives reached their headquarters to 
find that in their absence their camp had been sacked by 
Mohawks and fifty of their women and children left dead 
in the ruins. This was the final blow, and they scattered 
aimlessly in the wilderness. 

Henchman arriving two days after the Hadley assault, 
on the 16th the forces moved up the Valley to scour both 
sides of the River. Talcott' s division took the west side ; 
Henchman's the east side. As they marched no Indians 
were seen. Deerfield was deserted of the five hundred said 



160 Connecticut River 

to have been there. At night both divisions met at the 
' Great Falls, drenched by a cold northeaster. The storm 
continued through the next day and night, spoiling much 
of their provisions and ammunition. Then they returned 
to Hadley, leaving scouts farther to range the woods. 

Now the "hostiles " were reported to be all in a continual 
motion, shifting gradually, some working toward Wachu- 
sett, others towards Narragansett, while Philip and his fol- 
lowers had left Wachusett for their old country, bent on 
whatever mischief they could do along the way. So the 
armies marched off, Henchman to the eastward, and Talcott 
to Hartford, leaving Captain Swain again in command in 
the Valley with the garrison men. Shortly after scouts 
from the Hadley garrison went up to what it now Green- 
field and destroyed a deserted Indian fort on Smead's 
Island, with a stock of provisions in the " barns," thirty 
canoes, and a hundred wigwams. A month and a half 
later Swain received orders to collect the soldiers from all 
the garrisons " and march to Deerfield, Squakheag, and the 
places thereabouts, and destroy all the growing corn, and 
then march homeward." The carrying out of these orders 
on August 22 was the final act in Philip's War in the 
Valley. 

The finishing strokes, with the passing of Philip, were 
given in the Narragansett country where the war had begun. 
While the scouting parties were at their work along the 
River, Major Talcott with Connecticut troops, in conjunc- 
tion with the Bay and Plymouth forces, was in that region 
driving the enemy. By July, Philip and the remnant of 
his Wampanoags had reached his old lair at Mount Hope, 
deserted by all of his allies. The Narragansetts were scat- 
tered. The Nipmucks were drifting toward Maine and 



Rising of the Narragansetts 161 

Canada. The broken Pocumtucks were mostly working 
westward to find refuge with the Mohicans. A small band 
of refugees fled to the Hudson. By Governor Andres's order 
they were seciured, but their surrender at the demand of 
Connecticut refused. Lest others following might return 
with recruits, scouts ranged the woods about the lower Val- 
ley towns, while guards protected the people at their work 
in the fields. Late in July a body of several hundred re- 
fugees passed near Westfield going westward. The garrison 
soldiers gave chase, but they kept their way, taking "a 
southwest course as if to cross the Hudson at Esopus, to 
avoid the Mohawks." Three weeks later another band of 
two hundred crossed the Connecticut at Chicopee on a raft 
and disappeared beyond Westfield. They were overtaken 
at the Housatonic, and a number killed or captured. The 
rest got away also to the westward. These bodies of re- 
fugees were finally absorbed in the Mohicans. 

On the day that the orders went out to Captain Swaine 
at Hadley to destroy the corn (August 12), Philip, at last 
driven to bay by the great Indian fighter, Captain Benjamin 
Chm'ch, — his ablest braves slain, deserted, betrayed, bereft 
by the capture of his wife and only son, crying in his grief, 
"My heart breaks, now I am ready to die," — fell, and his 
head was carried in triumph to Plymouth on the day ap- 
pointed for a public thanksgiving, there long to be exposed 
on the battlement of Plymouth fort. His boy, the last of 
the Massasoit race, was sold as a slave in Bermuda. 

The proud Wampanoags and the jjrouder Narragansetts 
had now suffered the fate of the Pequots. The Nipmucks 
also were broken up and had migrated north and west with 
the few surviving Narragansett warriors who had escaped 
capture. The treatment of the captured to the last was 
relentless. " Death or slavery was the penalty for all 



162 Connecticut Iliver 

known or suspected to have been concerned in the shedding 
of English blood." Many chiefs were executed at Boston 
and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion. Many captives 
not killed were distributed among the colonists as " ten- 
year servants." 

The sum of the war's results to the colonists was grave. 
Of the able-bodied men in the colonies affected, one in twenty 
had been killed or died of wounds, and the same proportion 
of families had been burnt out of their homes. At least 
thu-teen towns had been whoUy destroyed ; others had been 
sorely damaged. More than six hundred houses, near a 
tenth part of New England, had been burned. "There was 
scarcely a family in which some one had not suffered." 
Six hundred men, most of them in the prime of life, and 
twelve tried captains, had fallen on the battle-field ; more, 
surviving the conflict, bore scars of their desperate encoun- 
ters. The cost of the war, in expenses and losses, reached 
a total of half a million dollars, truly " an enormous sum 
for the few of that day." 

The group of Valley towns that had suffered the greatest 
hardships slowly recovered from the ravages of this war. 
With the advent of spring immediately following the close 
of hostilities an attempt to resettle Deerfield was made. 
This ended tragically. Later settlers effected a permanent 
lodgment, and it again became the frontier town, so to re- 
main for a third of a century, except the interval of five 
years during which Northfield was occupied. 

But Indian affau's continued unsettled. The hostile 
Valley clans, though expelled and scattered, were not sub- 
dued, and roving bands coming down from the north re- 
peatedly harassed the upper towns till the French and Indian 
wars broke upon the Valley. 



Rising of the Narragansetts 163 

Still life at this period was not all sombre in the River 
towns. There were various mild diversions, chief among 
them the lecture days and training days. Not a little 
cheeriness was mixed with the perils of the River folk. 
Recalling their manners and their ways of living as the 
seventeeth century was closing, Roger Wolcott remarked 
the " simplicity and honesty of the generality." Their 
blemishes he observed to be too much censoriousness and 
detraction. " And as they had much cyder many of them 
drank too much of it." 



XIII 

The Sack of Deerfield. 

The Settlement, again the Outpost, repeatedly raided in the early French and 
Indian Wai^-The Hvst Captives marched to Canada from Deerheld and 
Hatfield -Knightly Quest of two Hatfield Men -Bootless raid of Baron 
de Saint-Castin- Motive of de VaudreuiFs Expedition resultnig in the 
Sack -Deerfield a.s it appeared before the Onset -Completeness of the Sur- 
prise by De Rouville's Army -The Palisades scaled over Snowdrifts - 
Scene at the Parsonage - Siege of the Benoni Stebbins House -Start of 
one hundred and twelve Captives for Canada. 

DEERFIELD, as the outpost in the Valley from the 
time of its reoccupation by permanent settlers in 
1682 had borne the brunt of the Indian raids upon the 
River towns during King William's War of 1690-1698, 
and in Queen Anne's War of 1702-1713, till the second 
year of the latter war, when the Marquis de Vaudreuil, 
French governor of Canada, sent out a midwinter expedi- 
tion directly for the destruction of this " frontier of the 
Boston government." It was the awful work of that ex- 
pedition, in the burnmg of the town, the massacre or cap- 
ture of nearly all its inhabitants, and the marching of one 
hundred and twelve captives, the mmister with his flock, 
three hundred miles over the ice and snow to Canada, which 
has become familiar in history and legend as "The Sack 

of Deerfield." 

More than a quarter of a century earlier some Deerfield 
settlers had formed a part of the first of all bands of cap- 
tive whites to be taken on this crael journey through the 
wilderness, along which so many in subsequent parties fell 

164 




Door of the " Ensign Sheldon House," with us " Hatchet- 
Hewn Face." 
Relic of the sack of Deerfield, February, 1703/4. 



The Sack of Deerfield 165 

by the way, less through exhaustion and exposure than 
from the Indians' tomahawk and scalping knife. 

The story of the captives' march that followed the Sack 
of 1703-4 is but a repetition, on a larger scale and with 
more tragic detail, of the story of the first one of 1677. 

The party of 1677 comprised twenty-eight men, women, 
and children. They were Hatfield and Deerfield folk, 
captured by a band of refugee Pocumtucks and a single Nar- 
ragansett, who had come down from Canada under a Cana- 
dian chief, in September of that year, — the year after the 
close of Philip's War. The Deerfield portion were survi- 
vors of a group of a half-dozen settlers, led by Quintin 
Stockwell, of " Stockwell Fort," destroyed in Philip's 
War, who had ventured the resettlement of the town in 
the preceding spring. The raiders, unaware of the ven- 
tm'e at Deerfield, had first fallen upon Hatfield, supposing 
it to be the outmost settlement. The truth was discovered 
to them by the Deerfield camp-fire at twilight, after they 
had pillaged Hatfield and were starting up river on their 
return march, with then- captives and plunder. CreejDing 
down from the woods on East Mountain, they completely 
surprised the camp as supper was preparing. Though 
valiantly resisting the sudden assault, the little group of 
settlers were crushed by the superior numbers that sur- 
rounded them. Four of the six, with a Hatfield boy who 
happened with them, fell into the enemy's hands and were 
joined to the other captives on East Mountain. The Hat- 
field captives were composed of broken families, mostly the 
women and children. Of the fidl company of twenty-eight 
beginning the northern march, three or foiu" fell by the 
way. John Root of the Deerfield group and the Hatfield 
boy, Sammy Russell, — who had lost his mother and 
younger brother in the slaughter at Hatfield, — were early 



166 Connecticut River 

killed by their captors ; and later a little Hatfield gii'l, 
Mary Foote. was killed, probably, like the boy, for stragg- 
ling. Benoni Stebbins, of the Deerfield group, managed 
to escape early in the jomney, and got back to Hadley 
with the first authentic news of the destination of the cap- 
tives. Quintin Stockwell weathered the journey with 
much distress from wounds which he had received in the 
fight at Deerfield, and was subsequently ransomed. " Old 
Sergeant Plympton," — not so very old, being vmder sixty, 
— another of the Deerfield group, who had served with 
Captain Moseley in Philip's War, was burned at the stake 
after the arrival in Canada. A woman captive was forced 
to lead him to the fire, we read, though the stoutrhearted 
fellow approached it not only unflinchingly but " with 
cheerfulness." Three wintry months were consumed on 
this first march, on which long halts were made at Indian 
camps far up the River ; and at its end the captives were 
scattered in French and Indian villages. 

A rescue party composed of soldiers and volunteers 
from Hatfield and the towns next below had hurried out 
in pursuit of the raiders, but after a bewildering chase for 
nearly forty miles up the Valley without result they re- 
turned disheartened. The wily foe had doubled on their 
tracks, and crossed and recrossed the River, so confusing 
all traces. Then followed a knightly quest by two Hatfield 
men, Benjamin Waite and Stephen Jennings, whose entire 
families were among the captives. Armed with papers 
from the Bay comicil authorizing their expedition, and with 
letters from the Bay governor to the French governor and 
to a great Indian sachem, making overtm-es for the redemp- 
tion of the captives, the two men started off on their lonely 
pilgrimage in the desolate season of December. After ex- 
traordinary exertions and grave perils, these adventurous 



The Sack of Deerfield 167 

men met with the fullest success. Their families were 
restored to them, and finally, through the help of Frontenac 
at Quebec, the ransom of the whole j^arty was effected. 
The reader of the narrative which Hubbard gives of this 
quest will be disposed to agree with him that it would 
have afforded " Matter for a large Fiction to some of the 
ancient Poets." It was, as he says, unparalleled by " any 
attempt of that natm-e since the English came into these 
parts." Other similar and heroic pilgrimages followed in 
after years, the record of which ennobles the annals of 
New England colonial wars. 

For most of the time between the break-up of Quintin 
Stockwell's camp and the return of permanent settlers the 
fruitful plantation of Deerfield lay " a wilderness, a dwell- 
ing for owls and a pasture for flocks." The reoccupation 
in the spring of 1682 was effected by a handful of former 
settlers who had been scattered in the towns below. They 
were enabled to set up their few houses and rehabilitate 
the old fort unmolested till the opening of King William's 
War. Of that war the most threatening event in the 
Valley was an assault by an expedition of French and 
Indians from Canada, sent out against Deerfield in the 
autumn of 1694, under the Baron de Saint-Castin. He 
was that fiery yoimg Frenchman, Jean Vincent, who, com- 
ing out in the first regiment of regular troops sent over 
by the French government to Canada, afterward settled 
among the Indians of the Abenakis at Pentagoet, now 
Castine, on Penobscot Bay, and allied himself with their 
chief, Madockawando, whose daughters he took for wives, 
and became to the clan as their tutelar deity. Castin had 
accomplished the long march from the north imdiscovered, 
skilfully eluding the English scouts then ranging the woods, 



168 Connecticut River 

and had led his force down from East Mountain, intending 
to attack Deerfield at the north gate and take it by sur- 
prise, when a boy in the meadows chanced upon the creep- 
ing foe. The boy was shot before he could give the alarm, 
but the report of the gun gave it in his stead. At the 
signal the townsfolk hastened within the stockade, and 
the men took position for defence, drilled as they had been 
for just such a sudden attack. The school-dame and her 
flock of children were the last to get under cover. As 
they were rushing to the gate they were chased and fired 
upon ; and they had barely reached it, with bullets whist- 
ling about their ears, when the general assault began. It 
was of short duration, for the stockade was successfully 
defended and the enemy were discomfited. Then they 
were " driven ignominiously back to the wilderness." 

The Deerfield upon which Vaudreuil's expedition of 
February, 170Si-4 fell had grown to embrace forty-one 
houses and two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants. It 
was built as now along the length of the plateau of the 
Town Street. Fifteen of the forty-one houses were within 
the line of the stockade, twelve north and fourteen south 
of it. Meetinghouse Hill is now marked by the monu- 
ment which commemorates the settlers and the men of the 
Civil War, and stands in the Common midway on Deer- 
field Old Street, within the lines of the old fort. The 
minister's little house, forty-two by twenty feet, with a 
lean-to, and his barn, both of which the town had built for 
him, stood back on the Common, where is now the academy. 
Benoni Stebbins' and Ensign John Sheldon's houses, im- 
portant features in the Sack of the town, stood nearby to 
the northward. An inscribed tablet on the Common, beneath 
old elms, marks the site of the former ; and a few rods 



The Sack of Deerfield 169 

above a similar tablet marks that of the latter. The 
Sheldon house at the time of the Sack was the largest in 
the place. These three houses were a group by themselves 
twelve or fifteen rods from the houses on the east and 
south. 

Grave apprehensions of trouble, based on reports of the 
enemy's movements, had been felt some time before it 
came, and the townsfolk had all been living inside the fort. 
In the previous May the council at Boston had provided a 
guard for the town, and the soldiers composing it were 
quartered among the inhabitants. Two were latterly as- 
signed to the minister's house, one of these being John 
Stoddard, son of the Northampton minister, who afterward, 
as Colonel John Stoddard, became the chief military man 
in the Valley. In October, the minister, John Williams, 
sent to Governor Dudley at Boston a particular account of 
the distress of the town under the dangers to which it was 
exposed. The townspeople, he wrote, had been "driven 
from their houses and home lots into the fort," where 
were then but ten house-lots. Similarly wrote Solomon 
Stoddard, the Northampton minister. " Their houses are 
so crowded, sometimes with soldiers, that men and women 
can do little business within doors, and their spirits are so 
taken up with their dangers that they have little heart to 
undertake what is needful for advancing their estates. . . . 
"Sometimes they are alarmed and called off from their busi- 
ness, sometimes they dare not go into their fields; and 
when they do go, they are fain to wait tiU they have a 
guard." Almost the only commimication between the 
houses, according to another account, was by passages 
underground from cellar to cellar. 

Such was the little village within the rude walls of the 
picketed fort on the night before the attack, on the last of 



170 Connecticut River 

February. When that night closed dowTi Sheldon counts 
two hundred and ninety-one souls here. Of these, he finds, 
twenty were garrison soldiei's ; two were visitors from 
Hatfield ; three. Frenchmen from Canada ; one, a friendly 
Indian ; and three, negro slaves. The rest were the towns- 
people, of all ages, " from Widow Allison of eigthy-foiu 
years, to John, the youngling of Deacon Trench's flock, of 
four weeks." In the minister's house with him were his 
family, — his wife Eunice, a daughter of Eleazer Mather, 
the earlier Northampton minister, and seven of their eight 
living children, with two negro slaves, a maid and a man, 

— and the two soldiers as guard. In the Stebbins house 
were three families and a guard. In the Sheldon house, 

— the ensign's family, and his newly married son with 
his bride, bom Hannah Chapin of Springfield, whose w^ed- 
ding joui'ney had been a winter's trip from Springfield to 
this house on horseback, the bride riding a pillion behind 
the groom. Outside, the snow lay heavily on the meadows, 
and piled in drifts against the stockade. 

Vaudreuil's expedition was undertaken ostensibly in 
aid of the Abenakis of Maine, in response to an appeal 
from some of these Indians for help to revenge upon the 
English a real or fancied wrong suffered at their hands ; 
but more particularly in the hope of embroiling the Eng- 
lish with the Abenakis and breaking their treaty of peace. 
As de Vaudreuil reported after the Sack, " Sieur de Rou- 
ville's party. My Lord, has accomplished everything that 
was expected of it ; for independent of the capture of the 
fort, it showed the Abenakis that they could truly rely on 
om" promises ; and this is what they told me at Mon- 
treal on the 13th of June when they came to thank me." 
A side motive which Sheldon discloses in his ingenious 
brochure, Neio Tracks in an old Trail, was the French 



The Sack of Deerfield 173 

governor's desire to secure the person of Parson Williams 
to hold for the exchange of Captain Baptiste, the French 
prisoner in Boston, to whom the minister makes a passing 
allusion in his Redeemed Captive, as Captain Battis, who 
was a more important personage, at least to de Vaudreuil, 
than appears in the histories. 

The expedition was carefully planned and abundantly 
equipped for the journey down and back to Canada. It 
was composed of two hundred French soldiers, and one 
hundred and forty Indians, part French Mohawks, or 
" Macquas," probably, Sheldon says, in civilized dress, and 
part Abenakis, in native costume. Hertel de Rouville, the 
commander, was an officer of the line, leader six years 
before of the attack upon Salmon Falls Village, in New 
Hampshire, and afterward, in 1708, leading in the pitiless 
massacre at Haverhill, Massachusetts. Second in com- 
mand was his. brother. Lieutenant de Rouville. The soldiers 
were provided with snowshoes, and came down the Valley 
with little difficulty over the crusted snow and the frozen 
River. An extra supply of snowshoes and moccasins was 
brought for the use of the captives they expected to take. 
Provisions were conveyed on sleds, some drawn by dogs, 
as far as the mouth of West River, at the present Brattle- 
borough. Here the sleds and dogs were left with a small 
guard, and the rest of the way was made with scant supply 
of food in the packs which each man carried. Before the 
end of the march the band were obliged to subsist on such 
game as the Indian hunters could kill. As the town was 
approached the French soldiers were half starved and on 
the brink of mutiny. 

The party were made ready for the assault under cover 
of night on the bluff overlooking North Meadows, a mile 
and a half northwest of the fort. Crossing Deerfield River 



172 Connecticut lliver 

on the ice near Red Rocks, a halt was again made till spies 
"had gone forward and learned how affairs stood in the vil- 
lage. All about the fort was found in deep quiet ; even the 
watchman was asleep. Tradition tells that the wearied 
sentinel, while on his beat in the depth of the night, had 
heard from one of the houses " the soft voice of a woman 
singing a lullaby to a sick child," and leaning against the 
window of the room where the child lay to listen to the 
song had himself dropped asleep under " the soothing tones 
of the singer." Moving cautiously across North Meadows 
and down to the village, the invaders stole upon then- prey. 
It was now two hours before daybreak. Easily scaling 
the palisades over the snowdrifts against them, at the 
northwest corner of the stockade, De Rouville's men were 
inside and scattered among the houses before a soul was 
aware of their presence. The surprise was complete. The 
roused sentinel discharged his gun and gave the cry of 
" Arms ! " before he was overcome, but the alarm was 
drowned in the din that instantly arose. The signal for 
general attack was an assault by twenty of the Indians 
upon the minister's house, the French soldiers meanwhile 
" standing to their arms and killing all they could that 
made any resistance." j 

What befel the minister's household, and how pluckily 
if not recklessly the parson displayed his mettle, his own 
narrative best portrays : 

They came to ray house in the beginning of the onset, and by 
their violent endeavors to break open doors and windows with axes 
and hatchets, awakened me out of sleep ; on which I leaped out of 
bed, and, running towar s the door, perceived the enemy making 
their entrance into the house. I called to awaken two soldiers in 
the chamber, and returning toward my bedside for my arms, the 
enemy immediately broke into the room .... with painted faces and 



The Sack of Deerfield 173 

hideous acclamations. I reached up my hands to the bedtester for 
my pistol, uttering a short petition to God for everlasting mercies 
for me and mine on account of the merits of our glorilied Redeemer, 
expecting a present passage through the valley of the shadow of 
death. . . . Taking down my pistol, I cocked it, and put it to the 
breast of the first Indian that came up. But my pistol missing tire, 
I was seized by three Indians, who disarmed me, and bound me 
naked, as I was in my shirt, and so I stood for near the space of an 
hour. Binding me, they told me they would carry me to Quebec. 
My pistol missing fire was an occasion of my life's being preserved ; 
since which I have also found it profitable to be crossed in my own 
wiU. ... I cannot relate the distressing care I had for my dear 
wife, who had lain in but a few weeks before ; and for my poor 
children, and Christain neighbors. . . . 

The enemy fell to rifling the house, and entered in great num- 
bers into every room. I begged of God to remember mercy in the 
midst of judgment ; that he would so far restrain their wrath as to 
prevent their murdering of us ; that we might have grace to glorify 
his name whether in life or death ; and, as I was able, committed 
our state to God. The enemies who entered the house . . . insulted 
over me awhile, holding up hatchets over my head, threa ning to 
burn all I had ; but yet God, beyond expectation, made us in a great 
measure to be pitied. For though some were so cruel and barbarous 
as to take and carry to the door two of my children and murder 
them, as also a negro woman ; yet they gave me liberty to put on 
my clothes, keeping me bound with a cord on one arm till I put on 
my clothes to the other ; and then changing my cord, they let me 
dress myself, and then pinioned me again. Gave liberty to my dear 
wife to dress herself and our remaining children. About sun an 
hour high we were all carried out of the house for a march, and saw 
many of the houses of my neighbors in flames, perceiving the whole 
fort, one house excepted, to be taken. . . . Upon my parting from 
the town they fired my house and barn." 

The one house excepted — of those in the upper part 
of the fort — was the Ensign Sheldon house. Its stout door 
was hacked with axes and cut partly through, but could 
not be broken in. Through a slit bullets were shot at 



174 Connecticut River 

random, and the ensign's wife was killed while sitting on 
•a bed. The son and his bride jumped from a window 
of the east chamber in which Mrs. Sheldon was killed. 
Hannah, spraining her ankle in the fall, and imable to 
escape, unselfishly vu-ged her husband to fly to Hatfield 
for aid. This he did, " binding strips of a woolen blanket 
about his naked feet as he ran." She was taken captive. 
Entrance to the house was at length effected by a back 
door, and those of its inmates remaining were captured. 
The ensign's little two-year old daughter tradition says 
was taken to the door and her brains dashed out on the 
door-stone. The house was set on fire as the Indians were 
leaving, but was saved from destruction. It remained for 
nearly a centiuy and a haK, a landmark of the tragedy 
known as the " Old Fort." The battered front door, sup- 
ported by the original door-posts — and with a print por- 
trait of de Rouville tacked upon its frame — is preserved 
in Memorial Hall hard by, with other relics of the Sack. 

About the Benoni Stebbins house the fiercest battle 
was fought, and here the tide was turned against the 
enemy. Attacked later than some of the other houses, its 
inmates had some time to prepare for defence. The women 
in common with the men armed themselves, and stood 
with their guns behind the windows ready to meet the 
first onslaught. When it came the Indians were driven 
back with loss from the well directed fire. A second assault 
by a stronger force was alike repelled. A short respite 
was permitted the besieged while the enemy was captvu-ing, 
killing, and plundering at other points. Then the enemy 
came in force upon them, nearly the whole army, — the 
French soldiers now taking a part, — and surrounded 
the house. Bullets rained upon it from every quarter. The 
brave garrison sent out well-aimed shots in return. Several 



The Sack of Deerfield 175 

more of the enemy fell, among them young Lieutenant 
de Rouville. In desperate attempts to set fire to the house 
a Macqua chief and several of his men lost their lives. 
This chief was the one against whose breast Parson Wil- 
liams had pressed his cocked pistol when seized in the 
parsonage. At length the assailants were driven to cover, 
— in the Sheldon house, which they now held, and the 
meeting-house. From these shelters the attack was re- 
newed. Still the garrison held out, and the beseigers were 
kept at bay till relief appeared. This came from a party 
of thirty men on horseback from the towns below who had 
hastened up in response to the alarm spread by yoimg 
Sheldon, and by the smoke of the burning town. The 
siege had continued for three hours. Seven men and a 
few women in an imfortified house had successfully opposed 
" so great a number of French and Indians as three himd- 
red," — the figures are Parson Williams's. Truly, as Shel- 
don the historian exclaims, " in all the wars of New England 
there is no more gallant act recorded than this defence." 

Only one of the defenders was killed ; but he was the 
leader, — Sergeant Stebbins. One of the fighting women, 
Mrs. Hoyt, was wounded ; and also one of the two soldiers 
who had been stationed in the house as guard. When the 
relief party arrived a portion of the besiegers had with- 
drawn and were busied in collecting plunder, in killing the 
settlers' stock, in securing provisions for the retm-n march, 
and in taking captives to the rendezvous. A rush was made 
on those continuing the siege, the others were scattered, 
and all driven " peU mell out of the north gate, across the 
home lots, and North Meadows." The Stebbins house freed, 
the men of its valiant garrison joined in the chase, while the 
women and children ran to the cover of Captain Jonathan 
WeUs's fortified house outside the fort. The Stebbins house 



176 Connecticut River 

was accidentally burned after its inmates had left. The 
chase, joined in also by Cajjtain Wells and fifteen other 
Deerfield men with some garrison soldiers, was hotly con- 
tinued for about a mile, without order, each man fighting 
on his own hook. As the pursuers warmed up, coats were 
thrown off, then waistcoats, jackets, neckcloths. Captain 
Wells, fully alive to the danger of such a headlong pursuit 
of an Indian foe, tried hard to check it, but in vain ; and 
at length the pursuers ran directly into the " inevitable 
ambush." Nine were killed, the others fled back in a 
panic. 

At night, when the number of men gathered in the vil- 
lage from other towns had increased to about eighty, an 
immediate renewal of pursuit and attack was urged. 
But the difficulties in the way made successful result 
appear out of the question. The snow was three feet 
deep and impassable without snowshoes; and of these 
there was scant supply. It was probable that the enemy 
could not be caught up with and attacked before daylight. 
If the approach of a rescue party were discovered they 
might and probably would at once massacre the captives. 
Such reasoning finally prevailed, and the scheme was re- 
luctantly abandoned. Diuing the following day Connecti- 
cut men, from farther down the River, began to arrive, 
coming in small parties, on horseback, till by nightfall the 
total of able-bodied men present had increased to two hund- 
red and fifty. Pursuit again was proposed. Now, how- 
ever, the weather had changed ; a warm rain had begun 
to fall, softening the snow and ice, and rendering travel 
hazardous. So this second plan had to be given up. 
Meanwhile the dead lying in the village were buried (in a 
common grave in the old graveyard on Academy Lane, 
leading along the lower side of the Common) ; and remnants 



The Sack of Deerfield 177 

of the property of the remaming inhabitants left by the de- 
spoilers — strayed cattle, hogs, and sheep — were collected. 
Then a garrison of thirty or more men was formed under 
Captain Wells, and established in his fortified house ; and 
those from other towns returned sadly to theii" own homes. 
There remained of Deerfield folk twenty-five men, with as 
many women, and seventy-five children, forty three under 
ten. 

Of the town's two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants 
before the Sack, all but one hundred and twenty-six were 
either killed or in the hands of the enemy on the cruel 
march of three hundred miles through the wilderness. 

After the Sack the few survivors left in Deerfield re- 
solved to abandon the place. But Colonel Samuel Par- 
tridge, the military commander in the Valley, forbade them 
to leave. Soldiers were brought in from below and it was 
made a military station. The able-bodied men of the 
village were impressed as soldiers in the queen's service and 
the non-combatants were sent off to the lower towns. The 
impressed men were to labor in the fields by turns three 
days out of five. This was done at the peril of their lives, 
for the woods " were full of lurking Indians watching 
chances for spoil," and raids were of frequent occurrence. 
The enemy also continued at intervals to swoop down from 
Canada in force upon the frontiers. Near the middle of 
May following the Sack, Pascommuck, a fortified outlying 
hamlet of Northampton, was surprised by a band of French 
and Indians led by Sieur de Moutingy, and the whole 
lot of settlers there, thirty-seven men, women, and child- 
ren, were captured and hurried off on the march for 
Canada. A company of horsemen sjjeedily in pursuit 
caught the enemy not far on their up-river journey, but 



178 Connecticut River 

with direful results ; for the approach of their pursuers 
" caused them to nock all the Captives ou the head save 
five or six. Three they carried to Canada with them, the 
others escaped ; and about seven of those nocked on the 
head recovered, ye rest died." The leader of the pursuers, 
Captain John Taylor, of Northampton, was killed. 

Captain de Montingy had been sent down by de 
Vaudreuil, after the triumphant return of Hertel de Rou- 
ville, ostensibly to avenge some English wrongs upon a 
northern tribe, in pursuance of de Vaudreuil' s original 
policy of fostering the savage flame against the English ; 
and upon his retm-n with the report of this slaughter, 
which " wonderfully lifted up " the Indians " with pride," 
de Vaudreuil resolved " to lay desolate all the places 
on the Connecticut River " at a single stroke. To this 
end he sent forth an army of seven hundred Indians 
and one hundred and twenty-five French soldiers under 
Captain de Beaucours, with several Jesuits in the train. 
" This army went away in such a boasting and triumphing 
manner," wrote Parson Williams upon witnessing the de- 
partm-e during his captivity, " that I had great hopes 
God would discover and disappoint their design." They 
were disappointed, and they " turned back ashamed." De 
Vaudreuil's inadequate explanation of the failure of the 
expedition, made in his home report, was that " a French 
soldier deserted within a day's journey of the enemy," 
whereupon a panic " seized the minds of our Indians to 
such a degree that it was impossible for Sieur de Beaucours 
to prevent their retreating." Sheldon's more reasonable 
view is that they probably found the River towns too much 
on the alert for a surprise, and they had " no stomach for j 
an open attack." They doubtless also were affected by 
accounts of the performance of a scouting party, composed 



The Sack of Deerfield 179 

of Caleb Lyman of Northampton and a few Connecticut 
Indian aUies, twenty miles below the general Indian ren- 
dezvous of Cowass on the Great Ox-bow of the River in 
Newbury, Vermont side. This was the destruction of an 
Indian camp and the indiscriminate scalping of its occu- 
pants, women with the men, which brought about the 
abandonment of Cowass and the flight of its Indians 
Canada-ward. But so long as this army hovered about the 
frontiers its scouts harassed the outlying towns below 
Deerfield, as far down as Springfield. 

Deerfield ceased to be the frontier town after the close 
of Queen Anne's War, Northfield becoming the outermost 
settlement in 1714, when its long deserted lands were per- 
manently reoccupied. 



XIV 

The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 

Journey of the Deerfield Band as described by Parson Williams — His last Walk 
with his Wife — Their tender Parting — The Gentle Lady soon Slain — 
Her Grave in the Old Deerfield Burying-ground — Other Captives Killed 
on the Hard March — The Minister's Faith in the Practical Value of Prayer 
— The first Sunday out : Service of Sermon and Song — Canadian experi- 
ences — The Minister's Wrestlings with the " Papists " — Fate of his Chil- 
dren — A Daughter becomes a Chief's Wife — The "Lost Dauphin of 
France." 



OF the march pf the Deerfield captives of 1704, its 
hardships, perils, and tragedies, we have the minutest 
particulars in the minister's unique account in his " Re- 
deemed Captive Returning to Zion," supplemented by the 
journal of his son Stephen, then a lad of about eleven. 
The forlorn company were gathered together and prepared 
for the march at the rendezvous at the foot of the moun- 
tain where the enemy had made ready for the attack upon I 
the town. More than half of the one hundred and twelve, 
Sheldon says, were under eighteen years of age ; forty of 
them not over twelve, and twelve under five. One of the 
latter, a " suckling child," was killed before the march 
began. All were provided with moccasins in place of their 
shoes. As they ascended the bluff the unhappy baud 
gazed back at the smoke of the fires, beholding " the awful 
desolation of Deerfield." Twenty-two of them were to 
fall under the cruel tomahawk, or perish from exposure or 
hunger on the march. Two were to have the good fortune 
of escaping. Only sixty were to return to their friends. 

180 




The " Redeemed Captive's" son, 

Stephen WiUiams. 

Minister of Lijiigmeadow for sixty-six years 

(1716-1782). 



I 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 181 

The rest were to adopt Indian or French habits ; some 
were to intermarry with their captors ; some to enter the 
Catholic religious orders in Canada. 

"We travelled not far the first day," runs the minis- 
ter's narrative. " When we came to our lodging-place 
the first night [in a swamp on Greenfield meadows] they 
dug away the snow and made some wigwams, cut down some 
small branches of the spruce-tree to lie down on, and gave 
the prisoners something to eat ; but we had little appetite. 
I was pinioned and bound down that night ; and so I was 
every night whilst I was with the army. Some of the 
enemy who brought drink with them from the town fell 
to drinking, and in their drunken fit they killed my negro 
man. In the night an Englishman made his escape ; in 
the morning I was called for, and ordered by the general 
[Rouville] to tell the English that if any more made 
their escape they would bm-n the rest of the prisoners." 
The minister's "master" thus far on the march — one of 
the survivors of the three Macquas who had first seized 
him in the parsonage and who held him as their especial 
prize — would not permit him to speak with any of the 
prisoners. But on the morning of the second day he passed 
to his other " master," who was so lenient as to give him 
the blessed privilege of walking for a while with his wife 
when they overtook the poor lady dragging her weak 
limbs through the trackless snow. Then follows this 
pathetic passage : 

"On the way we discoursed of the happiness of those who had 
a right to a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens ; and 
God for a father and friend ; as also, that it was our reasonable duty 
quietly to submit to the will of God, and to say, ' the will of the 
Lord be done.' My wife told me her strength of body began to fail, 
and that I must expect to part with her ; saying she hoped God 



182 Connecticut River 

would preserve my life, and the life of some if not all of our children 
with us ; and commended to me, under God, the care of them. She 
never spake any discontented word as to what had befallen us, but 
with suitable expressions justified God in what had happened. We 
soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came up, 
upon which I was put upon marching with the foremost ; and so 
made my last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes, and 
companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon our separation 
from each other we asked for each other grace sufficient for what 
God should call us to do. After our being jjarted from one another 
she spent the few remaining minutes of her stay in reading the 
Holy Scriptures." 

Poor lady indeed ! but rich in sweet virtues and simple 
faith. Very soon after this exalted parting she came to 
the death she had foreseen. In crossing Green River, 
through which all were compelled to wade, " the water 
being above knee-deep, the stream very swift," she fell 
prostrate in the chilling cm-rent. Weakened pitifully by 
her fall, she staggered but little beyond when " the cruel 
and bloodthristy savage who took her slew her with his 
hatchet at one stroke." The place where she thus fell is 
close to the upper line of Greenfield at the foot of the Ley- 
den Hills, and is now marked by a monument erected by 
the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association of Deerfield. 
Word of her fate reached the minister while he was rest- 
ing at the top of the hill below which she was slain : 

" No sooner had I overcome the difficulty of that ascent but I 
was permitted to sit down and be unburdened of my pack. I sat 
pitying those who were l)ehind, and entreating my master to let me 
go down and help my wife ; but he refused and would not let me 
stir from him. I asked each of the prisoners, as they passed by me, 
after her [and so got the awful tidings of her taking off]. And yet 
such was the hardheartedness of the adversary that my tears were 
reckoned to me as a reproach. My loss and the loss of my children 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 183 

was great ; our hearts were so filled with sorrow that nothing but 
the comfortable hopes of her being taken away in mercy to herself 
from the evils we were to see, feel, and suffer under . . . could have 
kept us from sinking under at that time. . . . We were again called 
upon to march, with a far heavier burden on my spirits than on my 
back." 

Subsequently Deerfield men ranging this country after 
the sad procession had long passed, found the body of 
Eunice Williams, and bringing it back to the village gave 
it decent burial in the old graveyard near the common 
grave of the earlier victims of the Sack. To-day her grave 
is seen beside that of her husband, under boughs of arbor- 
vitag, with a headstone thus inscribed : " Here lyeth the 
Body of M^'s Eunice Williams, the Vertuous & desirable 
Consort of the Rev°<i M"" John Williams & Daughter to y« 
Kevnci Mr Eleazer and M^^^ Esther Mather of Northampton. 
She was Born Aug* 2, 1664, and fell by the rage of y^ 
Barbarous Enemy March 1, 1703-4. Prov : 31, 28. Her 
Children arise up & Call her Blessed." Under forty years 
of age, the gentle lady had been the mother of eleven child- 
ren, six of whom survived her. 

The march continued along the west side country fol- 
lowing an Indian trail northeasterly, through the present 
Massachusetts towns of Leyden and Bernardstown, and 
Vernon over the Vermont line, to Brattleborough and the 
mouth of West River, when the Connecticut's frozen sur- 
face was taken. The camp for the second night was set 
in Bernardstown. Before the company were halted for 
this night two more had been killed, — an infant at the 
breast, and a little gu'l. Mr. Williams had also been 
threatened by an Abenaki who talked with his master 
about taking his scalp. But the master promised him that 
he would not be killed. At this camp a more equal dis- 



184 



Connecticut River 



tribution of the captives among the Indians was made, 
while the minister and others, stript of their good clothes, 
which the Indians sold to the French soldiers, were obliged 
to don the Frenchmen's coarser and dirtier garments. 
From Stephen Williams they took the " silver buttons and 
buckles which I had on my shirt." While here also the 
captives had a fresh alarm. Observing several of the 
savages peeling bark from trees, and acting strangely, 
they apprehended that some of them were to be burned. 
But the minister calmed theii- fears with the assurance 
that he was "persuaded that" God "would prevent such 
severities." As it happened these severities were not re- 
sorted to, but another unhappy woman, who " being near the 
time of her travail was wearied with her journey," was 
killed. 

From the rendezvous at the mouth of West River, 
where the sleds with the teams of dogs were taken, the 
march up the Connecticut was made with greater haste, 
for a thaw threatened the break-up of the ice. Several 
of the children were drawn by the Indians on the sleds 
with their wounded and their packs. For some hours 
the company travelled through slush and water up to the 
ankles. Near night Mr. Williams became very lame, from 
an ankle which he had wrenched not long before his cap- 
ture. And now there came to him one of several experi- 
ences on the journey that satisfied his believing soul of the 
practical value of prayer : " I thought, and so did others, 
that I should not be able to hold out to travel far. I 
lifted up my heart to God, my only refuge, to remove my 
lameness and carry me through with my children and 
neighbors if he judged it best; however, I desired God 
would be with me in my great change if he called me by 
such a death to glorify him; and that he wovild take care 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 185 

of my children and neighbors, and bless them : and within 
a little space of time I was well of my lameness, to the 
joy of my friends who saw so great an alteration in my 
travelling." Others, however, were less fortunate. For 
the next day the speed was so great that four women 
became tired out and they were forthwith slain. Stephen's 
diary records of this time, " they killed near a dozen of 
women and children, for their manner was if any loitered 
to kill them." 

On the first Sunday of the tragic journey Bellows Falls 
had been passed and the mouth of Williams River reached. 
Here the whole company rested for that day, and the 
minister was permitted to hold that Christian service under 
the wintry sky, with the dusky heathen girding his shat- 
tered congregation, which is commemorated in this river's 
name. Mr. Williams rose grandly to the occasion. He 
prayed with his stricken people, and preached them a ser- 
mon, taking for his text " Lam. 1.18: ' The Lord is right- 
eous, for I have rebelled against his commandments : hear, 
I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow : my virgins 
and my young men have gone into captivity.' " Then, at 
the call of the Indians to " sing us one of Zion's songs," 
he and the congregation bravely lifted up their sad voices 
in a familiar hymn ; and some of their dusky auditors were 
fain to upbraid them because " our singing was not so loud 
as theirs." Mr. Williams reflects mournfully upon the 
difference between the Indians' and the Papists' treatment 
of them in respect to freedom of worship. " When," he 
writes, " the Macquas and Indians were chief in power we 
held this revival in our bondage, to join together in the 
worship of God, and encourage one another to a patient 
bearing the indignation of the Lord till he should plead 
our cause. When we arrived at New France we were for- 



186 Connecticut River 

bidden praying one with another, or joining together in 
tlie service of God." But their revival had no influence 
upon the policy of their captors. On the next day's march 
two women becoming too faint to travel were despatched. 
The day following occurred another pathetic parting, with 
an exhibition of the wonderful fortitude as well as faith 
of the women of this captive baud : 

" In the morning l>efore we travelled one Mary Brooks, a pious 
young woman, came to the wigwam where I was and told me she 
desired to bless God who had inclined the heart of her master to let 
her come and take her farewell of me. Said she, ' by my falls on 
the ice yesterday I injiu'ed myself causing a miscarriage this night, 
80 that I am not able to travel far : I know they will kill me to-day ; 
but,' says she, ' God has (praise be his name !) by his spirit, with his 
word, strengthened me to my last encounter with death,' and so 
mentioned to me some places of scripture seasonably sent in for her 
support. ' And,' says she, ' I am not afraid of death ; I can through 
the grace of God cheerfully submit to his will. Pray for me,' said 
she, at parting, ' that God would take me to himself.' Accordingly 
she was killed that day." 

At the mouth of White River, now White River Junc- 
tion, Hertel de Rouville broke up the company into small 
parties who continued the journey in different directions. 
The party to which Mr. Williams with his children, other 
than Stephen, was attaclied followed the valleys of the 
White and Winooski rivers, Lake Champlain, the St. 
Lawrence, and Sorel rivers, to the French village of 
Chambly, fifteen miles below Montreal, being a little over 
a month on .he march. Stephen Williams was carried 
with the band that continued up the Connecticut and into 
the Coos country. After months of wandering, they struck 
across to the Winooski and made their way to Chambly 
and the Indian fort of St. Francois above, which was 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 187 

reached m August. The hardships of the minister's party 
were but little relaxed through the remainder of their jour- 
ney. Early on the way another child, a little girl of four, 
Avas killed, her Macqua master finding the snow too deep 
for him comfortably to carry both the child and his pack. 
Still there were some worthy exhibitions of savage kind- 
ness. The minister's children fared exceptionally well. 
The youngest daughter, Eunice, aged seven, was " carried 
all the journey, and looked after with a great deal of ten- 
derness." The youngest boy, Warham, f om* years old, was 
" wonderfully preserved from death ; for though they that 
carried him or drew him on sleighs were tired with their 
journeys, yet their savage cruel tempers were so overruled 
by God that they did not kill him, but in their pity he 
was spared, and others would take care of him ; so that 
four times on the journey he was thus preserved till at last 
he arrived in Montreal." So also the elder son, Samuel, 
and the eldest daughter, Esther, '• were pitied so as to be 
drawn on sleighs when unable to travel." Mr. Williams 
himself was occasionally helped along by his master. The 
latter made a pair of snowshoes for him, and the first day 
of wearing them he travelled twenty-five miles. Along 
one of the hard passages, when he was foot-sore, the mas- 
ter relieved him of his pack by drawing it with his own 
heavy one on the ice. One day they travelled from forty 
to forty-five miles. On the lake the devout minister had 
another " wonderful experience " of the miraculous efficacy 
of prayer, as he could not doubt : 

" When we entered on the lake the ice was rough and uneven which 
was very grievous to my feet that could scarce bear to set down on 
the smooth ice on the river. I lifted up my cry to God in ejaculatory 
requests that he would take notice of my state and some way or 
other relieve me. I had not marched half a mile before there fell a 



188 Connecticut River 

moist snow about an inch and a half deep, that made it very soft for 
my feet to pass over the lake to the place where my master's family 
was. Wonderful favors in the midst of trying afflictions ! " 

At length arriving at Chambly, Mr. Williams was ho,s- 
pitably received into a French gentleman's house and thank- 
fully enjoyed once again the luxury of a civilized table and 
rest at night on " a good feather bed." The greater part 
of the other captives had arrived before him and were dis- 
tributed among the Indians. His four children, who before 
the end of the journey had been separated from him, were, 
all but little Warham, in or about Montreal, in the Indians' 
hands. Warham had been bought by a French gentle- 
woman in Montreal as the Indians passed by. Nothing 
was at this time to be learned here of Stephen's fate. Later 
taken up to Montreal, Mr. Williams was placed under the 
guardianship of the governor, by whom he was held for 
exchange for Captain Baptiste. So far as it related to his 
"outward man" the governor's treatment of him was 
"courteous and charitable to admiration." He was as a 
guest in the governor's house. He was provided with 
clothing as became his station, given a place at the gover- 
nor's table, and "a very good chamber" for his living 
room. The governor also exerted himseK to get the min- 
ister's neighbors out of the hands of the savages, and espe- 
cially to redeem his childi-en, in which latter efforts the 
governor's lady lent her kindly aid. All the children were 
ultimately redeemed excepting the daughter Eunice, whom 
the Macquas would not give up at any price. So she re- 
mained permanently with them, growing early to their 
ways and customs, losing her native language and religion, 
becoming a Catholic under the teaching of nuns in her 
girlhood, and in time mai'rying a Caughnawaga chief who 
adopted her name of Williams. Young Stephen suffered 








V 

bo 

m 

a 
o 

B 
ai 

u 

C 

a 

o 

e 

3 



> 
■(5 

> 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 189 

many hardships and some romantic adventures, though 
" -wonderfully preserved " through his long months of In- 
dian life, during a time of " famine whereof three English 
persons died." He became skilful in the arts of the Indian 
hunter, and an adept in woodcraft. He was finally ran- 
somed, and rejoined the father in the village of Chateau 
Riche, fifteen miles below Quebec, after a separation of 
more than a year. 

But while the minister's " outward man " was so com- 
forted by his treatment by the governor and other French- 
men, his heart was torn by the miseries of his captive 
people through the Jesuit schemes to force them into 
" Popery." He too was in constant battle in defence of 
his orthodoxy. Every art was employed to win or entrap 
him into the Romish fold. He was cajoled, threatened, 
reasoned with, badgered incessantly, the pressure tightened 
with his unbending resistance. Once, at Quebec, when 
the intendant offered to collect all the captives and his 
children together with him, and secure him " a great and 
honorable pension from the king every year," large enough 
for his and then- " honorable maintenance," if he would be- 
come a Catholic, his spirited reply was, " Sir, if I thought 
your religion to be true I would embrace it freely ; . . . . 
but so long as I believe it to be what it is, the offer of the 
whole world is of no more value to me than a blackberry." 
Earnestly entreated by his lordship to accompany him in 
his coach to the great church on a saint's day, he replied, 
"Ask me anything wherein I can serve you with a good 
conscience, and I am ready to gratify you, but I must ask 
yoiu- excuse here." Shortly before his redemption, when 
he had been in Canada for two years, the " superior of the 
priests," remarking his now ragged clothes, told him that 
his " obstinacy against the Catholic religion prevented their 



190 Connecticut Iliver 

providing him better" ones. "It is better going in a 
ragged coat than with a ragged conscience," he retorted. 

He was denied intercoiu-se with the other captives lest 
he should hinder the work of proselytism. But ways of 
communicating with them, and of sustaining them in their 
resistance were found. For the comfort of those who 
secretly visited him, he drew up, in his " solitariness," 
some " sorrowful, mournful considerations " on the situa- 
tion, in verse of " a plain style," although he was " un- 
skilled in poetry," — as the opening lines attest: 

" The sorrows of my heart enlarged are, 
Whilst I my present state with past compare. 
I frequently unto God's house did go, 
With Christian friends his praises for to show; 
But now I solitary sit, both sigh and cry, 
Whilst my flock's misery think on do I." 

When the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners were 
finally completed the tussle with the French priests was 
at its sharpest. " I cannot tell you," the minister writes, 
" how the clergy and others labored to stop many of 
the prisoners. To some liberty, to some money and 
yearly pensions were offered if they would stay . . . Some 
younger ones were told if they went home they would be 
damned and biunt in hell forever, to affright them. Day 
and night they were urging them to stay ... At Montreal 
especially all crafty endeavors were used to stay " them. 
But the minister corralled most of the lot, and fifty-seven 
took passage on the homeward bound ship with him. 
This vessel sailed from Quebec in October, 1706, and in a 
month reached Boston. With Mr. Williams came two of 
his children, — Samuel and little Warham. Stephen had 
returned a year earlier, with Colonel William Dudley, 



I 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 191 

Governor Dudley's son, who had gone out with proposals 
for an exchange of prisoners. Esther, the eldest daughter, 
had preceded Stephen, having been brought home by En- 
sign John Sheldon with two of the latter' s children and 
Mary (Chapin) Sheldon, his young daughter-in-law. 

Ensign Sheldon had made the first expedition for 
the redemption of the captives, and the first of three 
undertaken by him, quests as knightly as those of Waite 
and Jennings a quarter of a century before. On this first 
trip, made in the winter season, on snowshoes, by way of 
Albany and the lakes, he had two companions : Captain 
John Livingstone of Albany as pilot, and young John Wells 
of Deerfield, who had lost a sister in the Sack, and whose 
mother was among the captives. Ensign Sheldon himself 
had four sons and daughters in the captive band, and his 
dead wife's brother with a large family. He carried pro- 
posals from Governor Dudley to Governor de Vaudreuil, but 
this mission was successful only in the ransom of part of 
his family and Esther Williams, and the return with him 
of Captain Courtemanche as a commissioner for the French 
side in the negotiations for exchanges. His second trip, 
again with Young Wells and another in Livingstone's 
place, made in the late winter of 1705-6, was more suc- 
cessful, for it secured the ransom of forty-three captives, 
the greater number of them Deerfield folk, who returned 
with him by ship from Quebec. His third pilgrimage was 
in the spring of 1707, and resulted in the return of seven 
captives, by the overland route, with an escort by Mon- 
sieur de Chambly, a brother of Hertel de Rouville. 

When Parson Williams returned from his captivity and 
came b^ck to Deerfield, in December, 1706, the place was 
yet little more than a military post. The minister's resto- 



192 Connecticut River 

ration to them, however, put new heart into the few towns- 
people, and something of the old town life was renewed. 
The town at once voted to build a new house for the min- 
ister, as "big as Ensign Sheldon's," which we have seen 
was the largest in the place ; and before the close of his 
first year back at home he was comfortably settled in the 
new parsonage with his children (save Eunice) again about 
him, and with another wife. The new house was placed 
on the site of the old one, and there it remained for more 
than a century and a half, the homestead, after the minis- 
ter's day, of generations of Williamses, and after them of 
another old Deertield family. Then it was moved off a 
few rods westward, to make way for the academy; and 
here it still stands, facing the minister's original home-lot, 
with an end on Academy Lane, a landmark protected with 
jealous care by its fortunate possessor. On the edge of the 
green which it fronts an inscribed tablet gives the passer 
the data of the home-lot and of the two houses. The min- 
ister's second wife, to whom he was married in September 
after his home-coming, was a cousin of the martyred 
Eunice, and, like her, a graudaughter of the Rev. William 
Warham, first minister of the Connecticut Windsor. She 
was Abigail, widow of Benjamin Bissel of Hartford, when 
she married the minister. 

Of Eunice Williams's children in the new household, 
three of the sons became ministers, and the daughter a 
minister's wife. These sons were put through Harvard Col- 
lege, graduating respectively, Eleazer in 1708, Stephen in 
1713, and Warham in 1719. Eleazer, the eldest, was ab- 
sent at school at the time, and thus escaped captm-e in the 
Sack. He became the settled minister of Mansfield, Connec- 
ticut, in 1710, and remained there till his death in 1742. 
Stephen, three years after his graduation, was settled at 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 193 

Longmeadow, down the River, and, in charge of that 
parish, spent his long life, which closed in his eighty-ninth 
year. He was a chaplain in the army in three expeditions 
of the later French and Indian wars. Warham was min- 
ister in Waltham, eastern Massachusetts, and died in that 
office in 1751, after twenty-eight years of service. Of his 
children three daughters married clergymen, and a son be- 
came a minister, professor, editor, and historian. He was 
Samuel Williams, LL.D., author of the first history of Ver- 
mont. Samuel, Eunice Williams's second son, became 
town clerk of Deerfield. He returned from captivity speak- 
ing the French language fluently ; and for this reason, in 
the latter part of Queen Anne's War, being then also a 
soldier, he was assigned to escort a party of French pris- 
oners overland to Canada. He died early, — in 1713, — 
never quite recovering from the hardships of his captivity. 
Esther, Eunice's daughter, married a minister of Coventry, 
Connecticut. 

Eunice, the daughter who remained with the Indians 
and married an Indian chief, was afterward found, but 
could not be induced to return to civilized life. Every 
effort to redeem her had failed, though strong influences 
had been exerted for her recovery. When, as chaplain in 
the expeditions of 1709 and 1711, Mr. Williams retiu-ned 
to Canada, the hope of rescuing her was strong in him ; 
and again when, in 1714, he and Captain John Stoddard 
were there as commissioners to treat for the return of 
prisoners, this hope was uppermost in his mind. Negotia- 
tions for her ransom were instituted by officials at Boston 
and at Albany ; but all to no purpose. The father never 
reached her. Years after, Stephen Williams, having found 
her, induced her to visit him at his home in Longmeadow. 
She came in her Indian garb, bringing her husband and a 



194 Connecticut River 

train of grave-visaged Indians. She greeted her brother 
with affection ; but she was firmly attached to the life of 
the forest, and civilization had no attractions for her. Her 
party would not lodge in her brother's house, but occupied 
during their stay a wigwam, which they set up in the or- 
chai'd behind the parsonage. This incident of her visit has 
been related by a gx-eat-granddaughter of Stephen Williams : 
" One day my grandmother and her sisters got their Aunt 
Eunice into the house and dressed her up in our fashion. 
Meanwhile the Indians outside were very uneasy; and 
when Eunice went out in her new dress they were much 
displeased, and she soon returned to the house begging to 
have her blanket again." She lived to a great age, dying 
in her forest home after the close of the Revolution. Two 
of her great-grandsons, John and Eleazer Williams, spent 
some years of their boyhood in Longmeadow, receiving 
their education under "Deacon" Nathaniel Ely, who had 
married a granddaughter of Stephen Williams. One of 
them, Eleazer, became a minister and a missionary among 
the western Indians. He attained a greater notoriety in 
his later life through his acceptance of the claim that he 
was not of Indian blood, but of royal French, — the real 
" lost dauphin " of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. 

He was that claimant over whom controversy waged 
warm fifty years ago, and good men became heated to 
angry invectives against each other. Older readers will 
recall the circumstantial story of the Rev. John H. Hanson 
in his papers, " Have We a Botu-bon among Us ? " and 
" The Bourbon Question," published in the Putnam's 
Monthly of 1853, which opened the dispute, and his sub- 
sequent book, " The Lost Prince," restating the story, and 
with not a little skill dealing with the critics and ridicu- 
lers of the claim. They will recall also the battle of the 



The "Redeemed Captive's" Story 195 

pamphleteers for and against the claim which continued 
after the death of the claimant in 1858. And lately the 
story has been revived for modern readers in an English 
publication, based almost entirely upon Dr. Hanson's book, 
but with slight if any consideration of the strong evidence 
adduced by his contemporaries against his theory. The 
basis upon which the Williams claim was made principally 
to rest was in three propositions : the alleged declaration 
of his identity as the dauphin made to him by the Prince de 
Joinville at Green Bay, Wisconsin, in October, 1841, upon 
the occasion of de Joinville's second visit to America, with 
the request that he should sign an abdication of the throne, 
which he declined to do ; of Williams's remarkable likeness 
to the Bourbons, and particularly to Louis XIV in feature 
and figure ; and of the appearance upon his person of a scar, 
at the exact point indicated where it should be, showing 
the mark of a crescent-shaped lancet which the Duchesse 
d'Angouleme had said, when she rejected the claim of Naun- 
dorf, would be found on her brother, made by the surgeon 
at the time of his inoculation, for the piu-pose of identifi- 
cation. Against these assumptions or declarations, counter 
evidence was brought (with the documents assuming to 
attest the death of the real dauphin in the Temple) to 
show that the fabric had been principally erected on 
Williams's " say so " ; that there was nothing substantial 
in support of the tale of the secret bringing of the dauphin 
to America and his sequestration with the Iroquois chief, 
the reputed father of Eleazer ; that the likeness of Eleazer 
to the Bourbons, if not largely imaginary, had no signifi- 
cance ; that he had the pronounced marks of the haK-breed ; 
that his Indian birth was sufficiently authenticated ; and 
that his head was tiimed by stories of his " royal origin " 
told him by some French officers. The last words in the 



196 Connecticut River 

controversy were said in Putnam s Magazine in 1868, 
against the claim, by the Rev. C. F. Robertson, afterward 
bishop of Missouri, who was the literary executor of Eleazer ; 
and for the claim, by the Rev. Francis Vinton of Brooklyn, 
afterward of Trinity Church, New York. In Dr. Vinton's 
statement were related incidents which he had not been 
allowed to publish during the life of the persons concerned, 
the principal one being an astonishing recognition of Wil- 
liams as a Bourbon by Prince Paul William, Duke of 
Wurtemburg, in Mr. Vinton's Brooklyn church on a cer- 
tain Sunday in 1853, when Williams was assisting in the 
service ; while Dr. Vinton clinched the whole matter, at 
least to his own satisfaction, with the declaration that he 
himself had seen the identifying mark of the crescent on 
the back of Williams's shoulder. Widely differing charac- 
ters were given Eleazer by the contending partisans. Cer- 
tain soldiers, General Cass and General A. E. Ellis among 
them, who knew him and ridiculed his " claim," declared 
him to have been a vain deceiver and dissembler. The 
Episcopal ministers defending his cause pictured him as a 
simple-minded man, devoted to his missionary work, a loyal 
Indian leader in the War of 1812, abashed rather than 
elated by the notoriety of the " claim." Perhaps the truth 
lies between the two. But the claim to the French prince- 
dom has passed into oblivion, a closed romance of history. 
Parson Williams's second wife bore him five children. 
The eldest of them, Abigail, named for the mother, became 
thi-ee times a wife. The fourth child, Elijah, developed 
into an important man in the last two French wars. In 
the "Old French War" of 1744-48, as captain, he had 
charge of scouting parties from Deerfield to cover the fron- 
tier on the north and west. In the final war, 1755-63, he 
was a major and assistant commissary, with headquarters 



The " Redeemed Captive's" Story 197 

in Deerfield. He was also a judge, a civil engineer, a rep- 
resentative in the General Court, and town clerk and 
selectman for a quarter of a century. Like his elder half- 
brothers, he was college bred, graduating fi-om Harvard in 
1732, and receiving an A. M. degree in 1758. He married 
first a Dwight of Hatfield, and second a Pynchon of Spring- 
field. His son, also Elijah, Harvard 1764, and an A. M. 
Dartmouth 1773, a lawyer by profession, was a Tory in 
the Revolution and served as a captain on the British side. 
He had a hard time with the " Liberty Men " when he 
came home to arrange some business matters, but he man- 
aged to escape with his life. 

The story of this remarkable Williams family has been 
enlarged in this chapter because it is the story of so many 
of the sturdy stock of early New England. 

Parson Williams died in the summer of 1729, in his 
sixty-fifth year, and was buried in the old graveyard by 
the side of the martyred Eunice. Abigail Williams sm- 
vived him a quarter of a century. When she died, at the 
age of eighty-one, she was bmried by the minister's side. 
The three gravestones with their inscriptions are the first 
to be sought by the traveller as he enters this serene en- 
closure on the meadows. In near neighborhood are the 
graves of Ensign and Hannah Sheldon. In a corner of the 
yard is the mound beneath which was the common grave 
of the victims of the Sack, marked " The Dead of 1704." 

In Memorial Hall are displayed against the walls of an 
upper room inscribed tablets commemorating each of the 
captives of 1704. In the library of the Pocumtuck Memo- 
rial Association, housed in other rooms, is preserved the 
manuscript of Stephen Williams's journal of the march of 
the captives. 



XV 

Upper River Settlement 

Northfield the Outpost in 1714 — Fort Dummer at the present Brattleborough 
The Pioneer Upper Valley Town — The "Equivalent Lands" — "Num- 
ber 4" at the present Charlestown — Father Rale's War— Gray Lock — 
Scouting-parties of River Men — Chronicles of their bold Adventures up 
the Valley — Schemes for new Townships — The " Indian Road " — Six Up- 
river Town Grants — The Massachusetts-New Hampshire Boundary Dis- 
pute — The Old French War — Abandonment of the new Plantations — 
Heroic Defence of "Number 4" — Story of a Remarkable Siege. 

THE plantations in the Valley above the north Massa- 
chusetts line were few and precarious till the close of 
the last French and Indian War with the conquest of 
Canada in 1760. None in the region was attempted till 
after Father Ralle's (or Rale's) War of 1722-1725. At 
the end of Queen Anne's War there was no English lodg- 
ment on the River beyond Greenfield, then Green River 
Farms, a district of Deerfield. The following year, 1714, 
Northfield, now permanently reestablished, became the 
frontier town. Its territory at this time extended above 
the present Massachusetts line, and embraced parts of 
Hinsdale and Winchester, now in New Hampshire, and 
Vernon over the Vermont border. With its forts and 
fortified liouses it remained a strategic point of impor- 
tance through the succeeding border wars. During Father 
Rale's War the English military outpost was advanced up 
the west side of the River above Northfield with the erec- 
tion of Fort Dummer at what is now Brattleborough, Ver- 
mont. With the close of that war Fort Dummer became 

198 



Upper River Settlement 199 

a track-house for trading with the again peaceful Indians 
coming down from Canada, and soon a slender settlement, 
mostly of traders, grew up about it. This was the pioneer 
settlement of the Upper Valley. It was the nucleus of 
Brattleborough, chartered and named some years later, 
the first English township in what is now Vermont. It 
remained the only Upper Valley settlement till or about 
1740. 

Fort Dummer was erected by the province of Massa- 
chusetts, which then claimed jurisdiction northward up the 
River forty miles above the present state line, eastward 
as far as the Merrimack River, and due west indefinitely. 
The fort was designed for the protection of all the north- 
western frontiers of Massachusetts and Connecticut. It 
was ordered at first to be garrisoned by " forty able men, 
English and Western Indians," friendly Mohawks. They 
were to be employed in scouting up the River and its 
tributaries Canada-ward, and easterly above Great Monad- 
nock, to sight the enemy approaching any of the frontier 
towns. The fort was placed on a section of the " Equiva- 
lent Lands " above Northfield, which extended along the 
west bank of the River between the present limits of 
Brattleborough, Dummerston, and Putney. The " Equiva- 
lent Lands " comprised four parcels of unoccupied tracts 
in different localities, one hundred and seven thousand 
seven hundred and ninety-three acres in all, that Massachu- 
setts had transferred to Connecticut when the boundaries 
between these two colonies were determined in 1713, as an 
" equivalent " for certain townships (among them Enfield 
and Suffield on the River) previously in the Massachusetts 
jurisdiction, but falling southward of the defined line, which 
Connecticut granted to remain with Massachusetts. Thirty 
years after, these townships, complaining of Massachusetts 



200 Connecticut River 

taxation and assuming to have been originally within the 
Connecticut charter, again shifted to Connecticut of their 
own motion. Shortly after the acquisition of the " Equiva- 
lent Lands," or in 1716, Connecticut sold them in a 
lump at public vendue in Hartford and gave the proceeds 
to Yale College. They were bid off by a group of Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, and London capitalists, who got 
them for a little more than a farthing an acre. The pur- 
chasers making a partition of the lands the parcel aliove 
Northfield fell to four Massachusetts men. These were 
William Dummer, then lieutenant-governor and acting- 
governor of the province, William Brattle of Cambridge, 
and Anthony Stoddard and John White of Boston. Hence 
the name of the fort for the lieutenant-governor, and of 
the township, subsequently established, for the Cambridge 
nabob. 

The site selected for Fort Dummer is in the south- 
eastern part of Brattleborough, and the locality is still 
known as Dummer Meadow. It was built under the 
supervision of Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton, 
Parson Stoddard's son, the soldier who was in Parson 
Williams's house at the time of the Sack of Deerfield. 
Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, also of Northampton, later 
a judge, the ancestor of President Timothy Dwight of Yale, 
had immediate charge of the work ; and he was the fort's 
first commander. It was constructed of hewn yellow pine 
timber, which then grew in great abundance in the neigh- 
borliood, laid horizontally nearly in a square. The longest 
side was presented to the north. Within, built against 
its walls, were the "province houses," the habitations of 
the garrison and other inmates. Its equipment comprised 
four " patereros," light pieces of ordnance mounted on 
swivels, with small arms for the garrison. It had a 



Upper River Settlement 201 

" great gun," but this was used only for signals to summon 
aid or to announce good tidings. It was a stout structure, 
and believed to be proof against ordinary assault. But in 
October following its completion (1724) it was attacked by 
a band of seventy Indians and four or five of the garrison 
were killed or wounded. Subsequently a stockade was 
built about it composed of square timbers twelve feet long 
set upright in the ground. The stockade inclosed an acre 
and a half of ground. This fort, with " No. 4," later 
erected up the River at Charlestown, New Hampshire side, 
was the chief northern military outpost till the conquest 
of Canada. 

Father Rale's War, though mainly a rising of the 
tribes east of the Merrimack, and in the province of Maine, 
led by the Jesuit enthusiast and backed by the French 
Governor de Vaudreuil, broke into the Valley in side 
assaidts by Canadian Indians incited by De Vaudreuil's 
emissaries. All the towns in the Massachusetts Reach 
were imperilled, and deadly assaults by small bands from 
ambuscade upon workers in the fields were frequent. It 
was the method of this enemy to come stealthily down the 
River in considerable numbers, and make camps at conven- 
ient and secluded spots near the towns. Thence spies 
would be sent out, and upon their reports of unguarded 
points, small bands would issue forth to take scalps and 
captives. In one of his reports Colonel Samuel Partridge 
of Hatfield, then the rugged military commander in the 
Massachusetts Reach, though bearing a weight of seventy- 
eight years, wrote, '• the enemy can and sometimes do lie 
in wait two months about a town before they kill or take, 
as some of them have acknowledged." They were Indians 
of the St. Francis tribes living at the confluence of the St. 
Francis and St. Lawrence Rivers, and the Caughnawagas 



202 Connecticut River 

established near tlie northerly end of Lake Champlain. 
The leader of their most daring expeditions was Gray Lock, 
so called from the color of his hair, whose name survives 
in the majestic Gray lock mount of the Berkshire Hills, in 
North Adams. Gray Lock was an old Warranoke chief who, 
previous to King Philip's War, had lived on the Agawam 
(Westfield) River. Upon the dispersion of the tribe he 
had gone to tlie Mohawk country. He was well known 
to all the River towns as a wily warrior. Now an old 
man, he is pictured as noble in aspect like the height that 
bears his name. At this time his seat was on the shore 
of Missisquoi Bay, where he had erected a fort and had 
collected numerous followers. After the war had opened. 
Governor Dummer and the captains of the Valley had 
endeavored with gifts to win him and some of the Caughna- 
waga chiefs to the English side. But they were too late. 
The French had got their presents in first. Gray Lock him- 
self managed to dodge the English messengers, always 
happening to be away from his camp when they called. 
He took the war-path in the summer of 1723, and he was 
the terror of the Valley to the end. 

To head off Gray Lock's and other expeditions, and to 
watch and ward the north and western frontiers while the 
main theatre of hostilities was kept in the eastern country, 
was the part of the Valley towns in this war. Accordingly 
the chief operations were those of scouting parties into 
which many of their lusty young men were pressed. The 
chronicles of those scouting adventures, in the terse jour- 
nals of the leaders, furnish fine material for colonial 
romances. They tell of silent marches through the un- 
broken wilderness, along treacherous Indian trails ; of win- 
ter travelling over the ice of the River or along the forest 
paths on snowshoes, constantly apprehensive of Indian 







3 



o 

m 
o 



c> 



Upper River Settlement 203 

ambuscades ; of magnificent endurance, courage, and nerve. 
While, acquainting themselves with the region, these men 
marked the way for the plantations that eventually followed. 
Much of the scouting was in the woods and over the 
heights between Northfield and Bellows Falls on both sides 
of the River ; and in this reach the pioneer Upper Valley 
settlements were afterward attempted. But several parties 
of rangers penetrated the Valley far above into the rich 
Coos country. More than one crossed to Lake Champlain, 
and pushed close to the Canadian borders. The leaders 
had thus early become familiar with the various northern 
trails through previous expeditions. Chief among them, 
by vu-tue of age and experience, was Captain Benjamin 
Wright of Northfield. He had done bold work along 
these trails in Queen Anne's War. The son of one of the 
settlers from Northampton killed at the destruction of 
Northfield in Philip's War, he had been a mortal enemy 
of the savages from that time, when he was a boy of 
fifteen. He was the first of English scouts to lead a " war- 
party " up to the Indian rendezvous of Cowass on the 
Great Ox Bow in Newbury, Vermont. That was in 1708, 
in the depth of winter, the "war-party" comprising a few 
Deerfield men and frienoly Indians travelling on snow- 
shoes. It was an expedition to discover the rendezvous 
and the plans of " hostiles " supposed to be in force there. 
It failed in the latter respect, for when the place was 
reached the Indians had flown. The expedition of Caleb 
Ljnnan of Northampton, in the summer after the Sack of 
Deerfield, referred to in a previous chapter, was an attempt 
to discover the same rendezvous, but L_yTnan fell short of 
the goal by about twenty miles. By the summer of 1709 
Captain Wright had advanced his scouts to within forty 
miles of Chambly. In the last summer of Father Rale's 



204 Connecticut River 

War he headed a band of volunteers who penetrated the 
wilderness farther than any previous English force had 
reached. Captain Thomas Wells of Deerfield was another 
of the veteran scouts of this war who led bands of savages 
far up the Valley. In the spring of 1725 he reached the 
Canadian frontiers with a company hastily recruited from 
Deerfield, Hatfield, and Northampton. Making note of its 
richness in passing, he afterward profited as a proprietor 
in one of the new townships. 

But the most effective work, in that it opened the 
region that first was settled, was accomplished by the scouts 
sent out from Fort Dummer, who ranged the country 
systematically between Northfield and the " Great Falls," 

— the Bellows Falls of to-day. These rangers were mainly 
directed by Captain Josiah Kellogg, then commander at 
Northfield. He was a returned Deerfield captive, experi- 
enced in the ways of the Canadian Indians from having 
lived their savage life. When captured at the Sack of 
Deerfield he was a boy of fom-teen (native of Hadley), 
and in the distribution of captives he fell to a Macqua 
who took him for his own. He lived the free forest 
life for ten years, acquu-ing meanwhile, with the skill of 
the hunter and trapper, a knowledge of French and of 
the language spoken by the northern tribes and by the 
Mohawks. Thus after his return to civilization he became 
of great value to the colonial leaders as an interpreter in 
their Indian councils. From the time of his retm-n to his 
death in 1757 he was almost constantly employed in pub- 
lic service on the frontiers. The journals of his scouting 
bands sent out in the winter of 1724-25 tell their story 
with vividness and brevity. Some scaled the mountains 

— the wild Wantastequat, opposite Brattleborough, and 
Kilburn Peak by Bellows Falls — and spent long winter 



Upper River Settlement 205 

nights on the summits " to view morning and evening for 
smoakes " of the enemy. Others scoured the woods on 
both sides of the River, crossing below the Falls and mak- 
ing a circuit of the country. Others pushed up West River, 
then steering northward, struck Saxton's River and fol- 
lowed that stream to its mouth in the Connecticut. 

The scouting was kept up for a while after the close of 
Father Rale's War with " Lovewell's Fight " at what is 
now Fryebiu-g, Maine, and the death of De Vaudi-euil in 
Canada, which "broke the mainspring" of the Indian 
campaign. Vigilance in the Valley was still necessary, for 
Gray Lock continued on the warpath, he having refiised to 
join in the treaty of peace with the Eastern Indians. 
Sometime in 1726 he was actually on the way with a hos- 
tile party, which he had collected about Otter Creek, to 
fall upon the River towns. He expected to catch them 
imguarded, and was tm-ued aside only by word from his 
scouts that a fighting force yet remained at Fort Dummer. 
Meanwhile, however, movements for new settlements 
had already begun. Quick upon the ratification of j^eace 
petitions for grants of lands above the northern and west- 
em frontiers showered upon the General Court at Boston ; 
and soon the government was moving to establish new 
townships. First the Court made provision for a " careful 
view and survey " of lands between Northfield on the Con- 
necticut and Dunstable (Nashua, New Hampshire), on the 
Merrimack, ten miles in width, preliminary to marking out 
townships. A scheme at this time contemplated three 
lines of townships, " in a straight and direct course," one 
up the Connecticut, one up the Merrimack, and the third 
in the Eastern country, or Maine, between the Newicha- 
wannock (part of the Piscataqua River) at Berwick, and 
Portland, then Falmouth. The survivors of the Indian wars 



206 Connecticut lliver 

and the families or heirs of those that had fallen were to 
have first preference in land grants issued. In January 
1727-8, the Court authorized an exploration of the region 
between the northern frontiers and Canada. One party 
was "to march up the Connecticut River to a branch 
thereof called Amonusock [the Ammonoosuc] and up the 
same, and round the White Hills, and down Androscoggin 
River to Falmouth, observing the distance of rivers, ponds, 
and hills." Another party was to discover the country 
between the Connecticut and Lake Champlain. Later, 
traders explored the " Indian Road," — by way of the Con- 
necticut, Black River at the present Springfield, Vermont 
side, Otter Creek, and Lake Champlain, — the route usually 
taken by the Indians coming down from the north to the 
Truck House at Fort Dmnmer. The diary of a journey 
made in 1730 by one of these traders, — James Cross of 
Deerfield, — describing the course of this Road and the 
country about it, was laid before the government. The 
messages of the Massachusetts governor, now Belcher, 
repeatedly urged measures to advance the settlement of 
ungranted lands. At one time he advised the employment 
of " a good number of hunters " to travel the woods on the 
frontiers and so gain a knowledge of them that would con- 
tribute to the future quiet of the country. 

But the plan for lines of towns northward moved 
slowly. The Coimcil non-concurred with the House in some 
of the details upon its periodical appearances through sev- 
eral years. In the interim a few grants were issued to 
individuals, soldiers and others ; and to petitioners for town- 
ships close to the established frontier towns. Two of these 
township grants were in the Valley. One was issued in 
1732, to Colonel Josiah WiUard, afterward commander at 
Fort Dummer, and sixty associates, for what became 



Upper River Settlement 207 

"Winchester, east of Hinsdale, New Hampshire side. The 
other, given out in 1734, went to the survivors and heirs 
of the dead of Captain Turner's company in the " Falls 
Fight" (Tiu'ner's Falls) of 1676, for the establishment of 
" Falls Fight Township," which evolved into Fallstown, and 
ultimately Bernardston (for Governor Bernard), west of 
Northfield. 

At length, in January, 1735-6, the Court and Council 
came to an agreement for a line of towns between the 
Merrimack and the Connecticut and set the machinery in 
motion to carry out this project. A survey was ordered of 
the lands between the two rivers from Rumford (now Con- 
cord, New Hampshire) to the Great Falls (Bellows Falls), 
twelve miles broad, or north and south ; and provision was 
made for the distribution of this territory into townships of 
the then regulation size of six miles square. Also, the lands 
bordering the Connecticut south of Bellows Falls, on the 
east side to Colonel Willard's town (the later Winchester), 
and on the west side to the " Equivalent Lands," were to 
be resolved into similar townships. The result of these 
measures was the plotting of twenty-eight townships be- 
tween the two rivers ; and two on the west side of the 
Connecticut. In November, 1763, at a meeting of peti- 
tioners for grants, called to assemble in Concord, Massachu- 
setts, grantees were admitted to four plotted townships on 
the east side of the Connecticut and two on the west side, 
designated by numbers, those on the east side being num- 
bered in sequence going up stream, and those on the west 
side, going down stream. The next step was taken a month 
later when a grantee in each group was appointed to call 
first meetings of the several proprietors for organization. 
Thomas Wells of Deerfield was named to organize the pro- 
prietors of Number 4, the uppermost east side township, 



208 Connecticut River 

.among whom were several other Deerfield men, and their 
first meetings were held in Hatfield. The others generally 
met in eastern Massachusetts. Number 1 west side was 
organized in Taunton. 

Thus were started, but not yet settled, the up-river 
townships that became Chesterfield, Westmoreland, Wal- 
pole, and Charlestown on the New Hampshire side ; and 
Westminster and Putney on the Vermont side. The terms 
upon which these and other township grants were made 
are interesting to recall. Each grantee was required to 
give bonds in forty pounds as security for the performance 
of the conditions named. The grantees were to build " a 
dwelling-house eighteen feet square and seven feet stud at 
the least on their respective house-lots ; fence in or break 
up for plowing, or clear, and stock with English grass, five 
acres of land ; and cause their respective lots to be inhabit- 
ed within three years from the date of their admittance." 
Also within the same time they were required to '' build 
and finish a convenient meeting-house for the public wor- 
ship of God, and settle a learned orthodox minister." Each 
township was divided into sixty-three rights : sixty for 
the settlers, and the other three, one for the first settled 
minister, one for the second settled minister, and the third 
for a school. 

Scarcely a foothold had been effected in these new 
Eiver townships when the climax of the boundary dispute 
between New Hampshii'e and Massachusetts was reached 
by the king's decree which shifted them all outside the 
jurisdiction of Massachusetts and made necessary readjust- 
ment of the titles. By this decree, March 5, 1739-40, 
which established the line as it now runs, Massachusetts 
lost all of the new townships marked out between the two 
rivers, and on either side of the Connecticut above North- 



Upper River Settlement 209 

field, together with a large amount of imoccupied land 
that lay intermixed, and a vast tract on the west side of 
om- River. New Hampshire on the other hand was given 
a far greater domain than she had ever claimed, her new 
bounds embracing a territory more than fifty miles in 
length, and extending due west, above the new north 
Massachusetts line, to " his majesty's other governments," 
which was assumed to take in all of the present Vermont, 
and northward to the province of Quebec. Then the royal 
province of New Hampshire was reinstated under its own 
governor, and in July, 1741, Benning Wentworth, son of 
the previous Lieutenant-Governor Wentworth, and an 
opulent merchant of Portsmouth, received the king's com- 
mission as governor-in-chief, empowered to grant town- 
ships, in the king's name, in the new territory which the 
province had acquired. 

For a few years after the shifting of jurisdiction the 
proprietors of the new River townships continued vmder 
their Massachusetts charters, while little groups of settlers 
ventured on their lands. In 1740, at about the time of 
the boundary decision, three families from Limenburg, 
north of Lancaster, Massachusetts, toiled up the River 
with their supplies and began the east-side settlement of 
Number 4, which became Charlestown. The next year, 
John Kilburn, originally of Wethersfield, Connecticut, left 
Northfield with his family, and stai-ted the plantation 
which became Walpole. Not long after, a pioneer was at 
Number 1, — Chesterfield. He planted, perhaps, near a 
preserve of five himdred acres granted to Governor Bel- 
cher in 1732, partly in the limits of this township, and 
embracing West Mountain, or Wantastequat, and long 
after known as "The Governor's Farm." In 1741, also, 
a family or two had moved up from Northfield to Number 



210 Connecticut River 

1 on the west side, — Westminster, — where was abeady 
one rough log-house set up by pioneers two years earlier. 
By 1742 a few families from Lancaster and Grafton, in 
central Massachusetts, had made a clearing on " Great 
Meadow " in Putney, beside the " Equivalent Lands," and 
had here built a fort. 

Then, in 1744, after eighteen years of comparative 
security and quiet, the Indians were again on the war-path 
with the outbreak of the " Old French War," or " Cape 
Breton War" (1744-1748), and most of these settlements 
were abandoned, the settlers falling back to the refuge of 
Fort Dummer and of fortified Northfield. There now re- 
mained above Fort Dummer on the west side only the small 
fort on Putney Meadows ; and on the east side, Kilbum's 
slender holding, together with a fortified block-house at 
Walpole ; and the remote settlement of a few families at 
Number 4 with a fort erected the previous year. 

The brunt of the enemy's raids down the Valley in this 
four-years' war was sustained by Number 4 as the outer- 
most post ; but, as in the previous war, the older towns of 
the Massachusetts Reach suffered much from the stealthy 
foe. As before, many of the heads of families were drawn 
from their regular occupations for defensive work or for 
army service, and many of the lusty young men exchanged 
the prosy toil of the farm and field for hazardous but 
exhilarating and promisingly profitable adventure, — for 
large bounties were offered for captives and scalps, — with 
ranging parties in the Wilderness. The war opened with 
the Valley gravely exposed, since jMassachusetts and New 
Hampshire were at strife growing out of the boundary 
matter, and vmion of action in protecting the River fron- 
tiers was impossible. NeAV Hampshire, indeed, bluntly 




Site of the Historic Fort " No. 4," of the French and 
Indian Wars, Charlestown. 



Upper River Settlement 211 

refused to take over the charge of the forts which had come 
into her jurisdiction, and would make no move to protect 
the River settlements above the new boundary line. " The 
people " here, her Assembly declared, " had no right to 
the lands which by the dividing line had fallen within 
New Hampshire." There was no danger, the Assembly 
concluded, and shrewdly, that the forts would want sup- 
port, since it was certainly " the interest of Massachusetts, 
by whom they were erected, to maintain them as a cover 
to her frontiers." 

The Indians who now again took the war-path were 
fully acquainted with the condition of affairs. They were 
aware of the state of the forts ; knew the lay of the towns 
with then farms and fields, and the customs of the English. 
Those who had come down to trade at the Fort Dummer 
Truck House had been free to hunt and to rove at pleasure. 
" They lived in all the towns and went in and out of the 
houses of the settlers, often sleeping at night by the 
kitchen fire." At the Truck House six Indian commis- 
sioners from the northern tribes had been maintained by 
the Massachusetts government for ten years, receiving 
regular pay and rations. At the first threatening note of 
war they suddenly left. 

Fort Dummer, however, happened to be in good con- 
dition, and the defences at Northfield were soon strength- 
ened. In addition to these a cordon of forts was erected 
from Fort Dummer over the mountains to the New York 
line. Of this series Fort Shirley in Heath, Fort Pelham 
in Rowe, and Fort Massachusetts in Adams (then East 
Hoosick), scant settlements along the north Massachusetts 
line westward, were built by the province of Massachusetts. 
Others completing the chain, fortified block-houses, in 
Vernon (then part of Northfield), Bernardston (Falltown), 



212 Connecticut River 

Colerain, and Charlemont, were erected at town or indi- 
vidual charge. At Greenfield and Deerfield new defences 
were also set up, or old ones strengthened, when " mounts," 
towers for watch-boxes, were ordered built on the fortified 
houses. Fort Dummer and Fort Massachusetts stood out 
the strongest posts on this part of the frontier ; whereas, 
between Fort Dummer and Number 4, thirty miles up the 
River, there remained only the slight structure at Putney. 
On the east side, at Keene, then Upper Ashuelot, east of 
Westmoreland, were also some slight defences. Colonel 
John Stoddard of Noii^hampton was again at the front, 
charged now with the general superintendence of the 
defence of these frontiers, with Colonel Israel Williams of 
Hatfield as second officer. The headquarters of command 
were at Northampton and Hatfield, and Northfield was 
the depot of stores and headquarters of service, soldiers 
rendezvousing here, with scouting and ranging parties. 
Captain Josiah Willard was in charge of Fort Dummer, 
and Captain Phinehas Stevens was early at Number 4. 
Captain Stevens became the " hero of Number 4 " in this 
war. He was a soldier of exceptional skill, fertile in re- 
sources, and was familiar with the methods of Indian war- 
fare, for he had been in his youth a captive among the 
St. Francis tribe, taken with a brother, at Rutland, Massa- 
chusetts, in Gray Lock's first raid of Father Rale's War. 

Number 4 was now a plantation of nine or ten families 
living in log houses grouped near together for mutual pro- 
tection. Before the outbreak of the war quite a number 
of Indians were here in friendly association with the set- 
tlers. They had taken part in the festivities at the erection 
of the first saw-mill when all the inhabitants had a dance 
on the first boards that were sawn at the mill. With the 
opening of hostilities they disappeared, but were known to 



Upper River Settlement 213 

be lurking in the neighborhood ready to swoop upon the 
settlement at the first opportunity, or to join attacking forces 
coming down from the north. The surrounding country 
was " terribly wild," with no English posts of consequence 
nearer than Fort Dummer and the settlements on the 
Merrimack thirty-three miles olf as the crow flies. Still 
during the first year the place escaped molestation, while 
the handful of townspeople held the fort, and scouting 
parties from down river occasionally ranged the region 
about it. The few depredations of that year were com- 
mitted lower in the Valley, the single tragic one at the 
Putney fort, when one Englishman was taken captive, and 
another, coming down the River in a canoe, was slain. 

But in the spring of the second year, 1746, when the 
French planned the destruction of the frontier forts while 
the English were mainly engrossed in the invasion of Can- 
ada, Number 4's tribulations began. Late in March Cap- 
taia Phinehas Stevens, having been employed in other 
parts, returned with forty-nine men to save the fort from 
falling into the enemy's hands ; and arrived just in time, 
for a force of French and Indians under Ensign De Niver- 
ville was then close upon it. On the 19th of April a few 
of De Niverville's Indians, watching the settlement from 
ambush, waylaid three men on their way to the grist-mill 
with a team of four oxen, burnt the mill, and capturing the 
men marched them off to Canada. Others of De Niver- 
ville's red men hovered about the place for some time, mak- 
ing no open attack, but constantly harassing the settlers 
and soldiers. One morning in May several women going to 
milk the cows, under the protection of a guard, were at- 
tacked by eight of them concealed in a barn, and one of 
the guard, Seth Putnam, was killed. As the Indians were 
scalping their victim the guard rallied and routed them. 



214 Connecticut River 

■ A few days after, twenty of a troop of horse who had arrived 
to reinforce the fort, loitered out to see the place where Put- 
nam was killed, and were caught in an ambush. Captain 
Stevens rushed men from the fort to theii" aid, as they were 
fighting against odds, when the assailants fled, but not be- 
fore a number of the troopers had been killed or captured. 
In June several of the men of another troop of horse, come 
to relieve the first troo}), also fell into an ambush almost 
immediately upon their arrival, when in the meadows after 
their horses. They fought the foe oft", however, without 
serious hurt. At length in July the fort was besieged for 
two days. Through the rest of the summer it was blockaded 
and all were obliged to take refuge within the pickets. So 
close was the investment that one man incautiously step- 
ping out was killed within a few feet of the fort. At night 
a soldier crept to this dead comrade with a rope, and the 
body was secretly drawn into the enclosure and buried. 
In August the investing enemy destroyed all the horses, 
cattle, and hogs in the settlement and soon after appar- 
ently withdrew. 

In the autumn, weary with watching, and fearful of the 
dangers of the forest when winter set in, all evacuated the 
place and fell back to the lower settlements. Meanwhile 
in August an army of eight hundred of the enemy under 
General Rigaud de Vaudreuil (son of the late Governor de 
Vaudreuil and subsequently himself governor) had oper- 
ated on the lower frontiers, taking Fort Massachusetts, after 
which a detachment had raided Deerfield with a loss to 
that much-enduring town of five men killed and one more 
of the many carried into captivity. 

Number 4 lay deserted till spring, when in March, after 
the snow had gone, Captain Stevens again returned, now 
with thii'ty rangers. He found the fort uninjured and 



Upper River Settlement 215 

received a joyous welcome from two inmates that he en- 
countered —^ an old spaniel and a cat left behind at the 
evacuation. Making things comfortable and strengthening 
the defences, he awaited developments, for attacks were 
threatened at different points on the frontiers. Before the 
close of March Captain Eleazer Melvin of Northfield, 
famous among the scout leaders of this war, came up 
with sixty rangers, but they were soon off on scouting 
expeditions. 

On the 4th of April the enemy appeared. It consisted 
of a body of trained French soldiers and Indian warriors, 
variously estimated at from f oiu" hvmdred to seven hundi-ed, 
led by General Dabeline, an experienced captain. They 
made an ambuscade near by, and their presence was scented 
by the dogs of the garrison. Then followed the siege of 
which Captain Stevens was the hero. 

Rising from their ambush, General Debeline's men 
hegan the attack with a furious assault upon all sides of 
the fort. But Captain Stevens and his thirty men stood 
firm each at his post, and beat them back with sharp plays 
of musketry. Five full days the siege lasted, and " every 
stratagem which French policy and Indian malice could 
invent was practiced to reduce the garrison," but without 
success. Says the captain's crisp report to Governor 
Shirley : 

"The wind being very high, and everything exceedingly dry, 
they set fire to all the old fences, and also to a log house about forty 
rods distant from the fort, to the windward, so that in a few minutes 
we were entirely surrounded by fire — all which was performed with 
the most hideous shouting from all quarters, which they continued 
in the most terrible manner till the next day at ten o'clock at night, 
without intermission, and during this time we had no opportunity 
to eat or to sleep. But notwithstanding all these shoutings and 
threatenings, our men seemed to be not in the least daunted, but 



216 Connecticut River 

fought with great resolution, which undoubtedly gave the enemy 
reason to think that we had determined to stand it out to the last 
degree." 

Fire-arrows were also discliarged, whick set several parts 
of the fort ablaze. But some of the soldiers, while others 
were fighting, had dug trenches at the bottom of the 
stockade, and through these they passed with buckets of 
water and extinguished the flames. Eleven such trenches 
were dug, so deep that a man " could go and stand up- 
right on the outside and not endanger himself." Thus 
they were enabled to wet all the outside of the fort, and 
keep it so, which they did through the five nights of the 
siege. The fire-arrows failing to accomplish their purpose 
the besiegers filled a cart with fagots, and setting them on 
fire, a number of Indians began rolling this fiery engine 
toward the timbered structm-e. Suddenly, however, it was 
checked in its course, the besiegers calling a cessation of 
hostilities till the next morning, proposing then to come 
to " parley." 

At this parley General Debeline promised that if the 
fort were immediately siu-rendered and the men should lay 
down their arms and march out, they should all have their 
lives, and liberty to take sufficient quantity of provisions 
to supply them on their way as prisoners to Montreal. 
But before Captain Stevens could reply the French officer 
broke in with the threat that upon refusal he would " imme- 
diately set the fort on fire and nm over the top, for he had 
seven hvmdred men with him." " ' The fort,' said he, ' I 
am resolved to have or die. Now do what you please, for 
I am as easy to have you fight as to give up.' " This the 
captain, imdaimted, met with the quiet remark that inas- 
much as he was sent here to defend the fort it would not 
be consistent with his orders to give it up unless he was 



Upper River Settlement 217 

better satisfied that the Frenchman was able to perform 
what he had threatened. " Well," the other retorted, " go 
into the fort and see whether yom- men dare fight any 
more or not, and give me an answer quick, for my men 
want to be fighting." Without further words the captain 
did as he was bid. Assembling his men he " put it to vote 
which they chose, either to fight on or resign ; and they 
voted to a man to stand it out as long as they had life." 
So, the captain's report continues, " I returned the answer 
that we were determined to fight it out. Then they gave 
a shout, and then fired, and so continued firing and shoutr 
ing till daylight next morning." 

At about noon of this day the last stage was reached. 
Calling out " Good Morning," the besiegers advised a ces- 
sation of arms for two hours, and another parley. Two 
Indians came with a flag of truce in place of the com- 
mander. The proposal now was that " in case we would 
sell them provisions they would leave and not fight any 
more." To this the captain made shrewd answer. He 
could not sell them provisions for money, for that would 
be " contrary to the laws of nations " ; but " if they would 
send in a captive for every five bushels of corn " he 
" would supply them." The messengers retired to report 
to their general, and pretty soon after, " four or five guns 
were fired at the fort, and they withdrew, as we supposed, 
for we heard no more of them." 

So ended this remarkable battle of seven hundred 
against thirty, with the complete discomfiture of the seven 
hundred. Of the besiegers many were slain ; while the 
besieged suffered no loss in killed, and but two were 
wounded. The record of their valorous defence reads like 
a story of prowess in the old heroic days. Said the orator 
on a commemorative occasion in the village that has 



218 Connecticut River 

evolved from " Number 4," lying now " peacefully in its 
fertile savannahs," — "except for that self-immolation, I 
cannot see that the prowess of Leonidas and his three 
himdred is worthy of higher admiration than that of 
Stevens and his thirty." 

An " express " carried the news of the battle to Boston 
with Captain Stevens's report, which was received with 
high satisfaction by the governor and coimcil. His gallant 
defence also won for the captain the admiration, expressed 
in the gift of " an elegant " sword, of Sir Charles Knowles 
of the British Navy, then in Boston. In consideration of 
Sir Charles's generosity the knightly sailor's name was 
subsequently bestowed upon the settlement, — as Charles- 
town. One might without prejudice hold that the soldier 
who saved the fort rather than the knight who rewarded 
the act was the more entitled to this distinction. 

One more attack was made on Number 4 in this war. 
That was in the spring of 1748, after a few of the settlers 
had returned and were living within the stockade with 
the soldiers. The men of the garrison were without snow- 
shoes, and so helpless in pursuit. This fact being learned 
by the enemy, a party of twenty Indians came down the 
Valley in the deep snow and ambushed near the fort. 
Their most serious assault at this time was upon a bunch 
of eight men going to the forest to cut wood. One they 
killed, and another they took into captivity. The one 
killed was a son of Captain Stevens. 

Indian depredations continued in the Valley for some 
months after the peace, reached in October, 1748, but not 
proclaimed in Boston till May, 1749. Notwithstanding 
the dangers, however, the settlers were returning to the 
new townships, and by the following year most of them 



Upper River Settlement 219 

were reoccupied, to be held till the renewal of hostilities 
four years later in the final French and Indian War. 

In 1751 the proprietors of the townships on the east 
side of the River above Northfield applied to New Hamp- 
shire for new grants in place of their Massachusetts char- 
ters. Accordingly in 1752 Governor Benning Wentworth 
issued charters for Chesterfield, Westmoreland, and Wal- 
pole; and for Charlestown in 1753. In 1752, also, he 
gave out charters for Westminster and Rockingham on 
the west side ; and in 1753, for Hinsdale, and for the west 
side towns of Brattleborough, Diunmerston, and Putney. 

This was the beginning of the "New Hampshire 
Grants." 



XVI 

The " New Hampshire Grants " 

Governor Benning Wentworth's great Scheme of Colonization — Collision with 
New York over his Grants for Townships on the present Vermont Side of 
the River — Captain Symes's Plan for laying out the Coos Coiuitry killed by 
Indian Threats — A great Powwow at " Number 4" — Captain Powers's 
Exploring Expedition — Interruption of Wentworth's Scheme by the Out- 
break of the last French and Indian War — Settlers again fall back on the 
Fortified Places — The River Frontiera now Established. 

GOVERNOR Benning Wentworth's scheme of coloni- 
zation at the outset contemplated the occupation of 
the " Coos country " of the Upper Valley, and of the 
domain on the west side of the River now embraced in 
Vermont. He was stimulated at the close of the Old 
French War promptly to move on the Cocis lands through 
apprehension that the French, who had already begun to 
encroach upon territory claimed by the British crown, 
would step in and possess this valuable region. His 
motive in hastening to establish footholds in the country 
west of the River was evidently to sustain the questioned 
extent of New Hampshire's bounds westward to twenty 
miles east of the Hudson, in line with the west boimds of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

The initial move was in the western domain, when, in 
January, 1749, the governor made a grant for a township 
at its tip end, which became Bennington, so called in allu- 
sion to his own Christian name. This act brought him 
into quick collision with New York, and then began the 
bitter controversy over the "New Hampshire Grants" 

220 



New Hampshire Grants 221 

which lasted for forty-two years with its attendant troubles 
in border towns on both sides of the River. 

The dispute opened, however, most politely, with a 
diplomatic correspondence between the governors of the 
two provinces. This was begun by Governor Wentworth 
in November following his Bennington grant, when he 
acquainted Governor Clinton of his commission from the 
king with his instructions to make grants of the unim- 
proved lands within his government to intending settlers ; 
and asked a statement as to the exact eastward bound of 
the New York province, " that he might govern himself 
accordingly." To this Governor Clinton replied, under 
date of April, 1750, with the opinion of his council that 
the bounds of their province extended eastward quite to 
the Connecticut, citing in evidence the letters-patent of 
Charles II to the Duke of York, which expressly granted 
" all the lands from the west side of the Connecticut River 
to the east side of Delaware Bay." Governor Wentworth 
made answer, the same April, that this opinion would be 
entirely satisfactory to him "had not the two charter 
governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts-Bay ex- 
tended their bounds many miles to the westward of said 
River." He then announced that, in accordance with the 
opinion of his council, he had, before his excellency's letter 
had come to hand, granted one township in the territory 
in question, presuming that his government was " bounded 
by the same north and south line with Connecticut and 
Massachusetts-Bay before it met with his Majesty's other 
governments." With the assurance that it was far from 
his desire " to make the least encroachment or set on foot 
any dispute on these points," he would ask to be informed 
by what authority the Connecticut and Massachusetts 
governments claimed so far to the westward as they had 



222 Connecticut River 

settled. In the meantime he should " desist from making 
any further grants on the western frontier" of his govern- 
ment that might have " the least probability of interfering 
with the government of New York." Governor Clinton 
responded, in June, with the information that Connecti- 
cut's claim was founded upon an agreement with New York 
in or about the year 1684, afterward confirmed by King 
William ; and that Massachusetts presumably possessed it- 
self of the lands west of the River "by intrusion, and 
through the negligence of this government have hitherto 
continued their possession." He expressed surprise that 
Governor Wentworth had not waited for his previous letter 
before making a grant in this territory, and remarked that 
he had reason to apprehend that the same lands or part 
of them, had been already granted in New York. If it 
were still in Governor Wentworth's power to recall his grant 
his " doing so would be a piece of justice to the New York 
government." " Otherwise," Governor Clinton signifi- 
cantly observed, " I shall think myself obliged to send a 
representation of the matter to be laid before his Majesty." 
Governor Wentworth replied anticipating the other's move 
with the statement that his council were "unanimously of 
the opinion not to commence a dispute with your excel- 
lency's government respecting the extent of the western 
boundary of New Hampshire, till his Majesty's pleasm-e 
should be further known." Accordingly he should make 
a representation to the king, taking it for granted that 
Governor Clinton's government would acquiesce in the 
king's determination of the question. As to his grant, it 
was impossible now to vacate it, " but if it should fall by 
his Majesty's determination in the government of New 
York it would be void, of course." In July Governor 
Clinton wrote approving the reference to the king, and 



New Hampshire Grants 223 

proposed an exchange of copies of each other's representa- 
tions. In September Governor Wentworth assented to 
the latter proposal. 

So the issue was joined. And here the matter rested 
till after the last French and Indian War, 1754-1763, the 
intervention of which prevented any determination of it 
by the crown. But bold Governor Wentworth had gone 
right on issuing his grants west of the River, and between 
the springs of 1751 and 1754 he had given out grants for 
thirteen townships on that side. 

The move into the Coos country began upon a quite 
ambitious plan matured in the spring of 1752. In March 
Captain WiUiam Symes of North Hampton, New Hamp- 
shire, sent a memorial to Governor Wentworth offering to 
raise a company of foiu" hundred men to explore the region, 
and cut a road from Number 4 to the Cowass meadows 
sixty miles above, with a view to its settlement, his men 
to have foiu* townships. 

From Captain Symes's memorial the plan developed. It 
was proposed to lay out a line of townships between the 
two points, one on each side of the River, and opposite to 
each other; to erect in each township a stockade with 
lodgments for two hundred men, encircling a space of fif- 
teen acres ; and to set up in the middle of this space a 
"citidel" to contain the public structures and granaries, 
and large enough to receive aU the inhabitants and their 
movable effects in case of invasion or other necessity. To 
render these new plantations inviting to settlers it was 
provided that they should have courts of judicatiu-e and 
other civil privileges among themselves. They should be 
under strict military discipline, so that each plantation 
would be at once a settlement and a military post. 

Toward the end of spring a party were sent up to 



224 Connecticut Riv^er 

" view the meadows of Cowass " and survey the proposed 
townships. But before work had begun a delegation of 
six warriors of the St. Francis tribe appeared at Number 4 
and asked for a conference with Captain Phinehas Stevens 
who remained in charge there. They had come from their 
tribe to protest against the movement, and did so with 
alarming vehemence. " For the English to settle Cowass 
was what they would not agree to." The land was theirs, 
and if its occupation were attempted " they must think 
that the English had a mind for war." If that were so, 
they would " endeavor to give them a strong war." There 
were " four hundred Indians now a-huiiting on this side of 
the St. Francis River," and if the English scheme were 
not abandoned they at Number 4 might " expect to have 
all their houses burnt." This interview Captain Stevens 
reported by an " express " to Captain Israel Williams at 
Hatfield, who in turn reported to Governor Shirley at 
Boston ; and Governor Shirley lost no time in communicat- 
ing it to Governor Wentworth at Portsmouth. The threat 
was sufficient. The design was discouraged, and it was 
relinquished as " under the circumstances impracticable." 

Trouble, however, followed close upon the Indian pro- 
test. Their blood was up, and roving bands, perhaps from 
the four hundred hunters, were committing petty depreda- 
tions here and there. Preparations, too, were making for 
the next French and English struggle. In the spring of 
1754 Governor Wentworth heard reports that the French 
had actually begun a settlement in the Coos country, and 
were building a fort there. To ascertain if these reports 
were true he sent out another expedition. This comprised 
a company mostly of soldiers under Captain Peter Powers, 
of Hollis, New Hampshire, a " brave and experienced offi- 
cer," They started from Rumford (Concord) and followed 




> 

-a 



New Hampshire Grants 225 

the course of the previous party, striking the River at the 
present Piermont, next south of Haverhill. Thence they 
marched up the Valley alongside of the Fifteen-Miles Falls, 
through the Lower and into the Upper Coos, as far as 
Northumberland, at which point it had been said the 
French had placed their fort- No fort was found, nor any 
sign of a settlement. But there were significant evidences 
of a recent Indian encampment on the River side, and of 
the making of canoes. They returned as they had come, 
unmolested, but Indians were close on their heels. 

Then, soon after, Indian hostilities were openly threat- 
ened with the outbreak of the last French War, and plans 
for warfare took the place of colonization projects. 

Again the few up-river plantations were mostly aban- 
doned, their settlers falling back upon the fortified places 
about the Massachusetts line. Number 4, now Charles- 
town, however, retained its inhabitants, increased at this 
time to about thirty-two families ; and at Walpole the 
Kilburn family remained, with Colonel Benjamin Bellows, 
the township's chief proprietor, and some farm hands also 
there. New Hampshire as before would afford no protec- 
tion for her River frontiers, and Massachusetts at first 
proposed to confine her defences to her northern line, thus 
leaving all the posts above exposed. Later, however, the 
holding of Number 4 from the enemy being of first impor- 
tance, Massachusetts undertook its maintenance, reporting 
New Hampshire's dereliction to the king. As affairs grew 
graver New Hampshire made slight provision for the 
defense of Walpole, ordering a handful of men there to 
Colonel Bellows's charge, moved to this action, doubtless, 
by Colonel Bellows's associate proprietors in the township, 
— Colonel Theodore Atkinson, the province secretary, 
and Colonel Josiah Blanchard of Dunstable (Colonel 



226 Connecticut River 

■Bellows's brother-in-law), both influential men in provincial 

New Hampshire's attitude in this matter of River pro- 
tection was not as censurable as would appear. It was 
due not so much to indifference, or to assurance that 
Massachusetts would have to care for her own protection, 
as to the fact that her abilities were taxed to the utmost 
in furnishing troops for the Provincial army at the fight- 
ing line on the Canadian border. 



XVII 

The Last French War in the Valley 

"Number 4 " and the Charlestown Settlement constantly Imperilled -Capture 
of the Johnson Family the Morning after a Neighborhood Party'- Mrs 
Johnson's graphic "Narrative" of their March to Canada and After Expe- 
lences-On the Second Day out she gives Birth to a Daughter _ Fortunes 
of the WiUard Family - The Johnsons after their Return from Captivity a 
Remarkable Record - Attacks on the Lower Frontier _ The gallant " Kil- 
bi^n Fight" at Walpole- Cutting out the "Crown Point Road" from 
" Number 4 " — Exploits of Robert Rogers's Rangers. 

CHARLESTOWN as the outmost post, with no settle- 
ment within forty miles of it, again bore the brunt of 
war, and throughout the troubled period, 1754-1760, suf- 
fered many hardships, while raids upon its inhabitants 
were the most frequent and tragic in the Valley. Lying 
in the line of march of the colonial troops of Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and New Hampshu-e passing to and from the 
Canadian points about which this war centered, it was a 
constant military rendezvous, and wore the aspect more of 
a military camp than of a peaceful farming community. 

It received the first sharp shock of the outbreak sud- 
denly, on a late August morning of 1754, when a band of 
Indians, who had stealthily entered the town, burst into 
the house of Captain James Johnson, seized the seven in- 
mates, just roused from slumber, and hurried them all off, 
together with a neighbor, on the dread march to Canada. ' 

The story of the adventures of these captives, as told 
in Mrs. Johnson's " Narrative," is in incident and pathos 
second only to that of " The Redeemed Captive " of Deerfield 



228 Connecticut River 

- The Johnson farm was then the most northerly place 
on the River. The substantial log house stood at what is 
now the north end of the village main street on the east 
side, about a hundred rods above the fort. The nearest 
habitation was Captain Phiuehas Stevens's block-house on 
the meadows. Captain Johnson was a leading townsman 
and a considerable trader in the Valley. Mrs. Johnson 
was a daughter of Lieutenant Moses Willard, a first settler 
with the Farnsworths, his haK-brothers ; earlier, with his 
kinsman, Colonel Josiah Willard, he had been a grantee of 
the lower township of Winchester. The Johnson house- 
hold comprised Captain Johnson and his wife Susanna, 
then a young matron of twenty-four, their three children, 
Sylvanus, Susanna, and Polly, aged six, four, and two re- 
spectively ; Mrs. Johnson's sister, Miriam Willard, a maid 
of fourteen; and two "hired men," Ebenezer Farnsworth 
and Aaron Hosmer. The settlers of the village had been 
uneasy for some time over reports that the Indians were 
out for their destruction, but discovering no signs of evil 
in the neighljoring woods, they were going about their 
affairs as usual. 

The evening before the attack there had been a party 
of several neighbors at the Johnson house, gathered to Avel- 
come Captain Johnson home from a trading trip down in 
Connecticut, and to look over the choice things he had 
brought back with him. The time had been spent " very 
cheerfully" with watermelons and flip till midnight, when 
all the company left except a " spruce young spark " who 
lingered a while longer to "keep company" with Miriam 
Willard. At length the household had retired with " feel- 
ings well tuned for sleep." So they rested " with fine com- 
posure " till sunrise, when a loud knock was heard on the 
outer door. This was the peaceful summons of Neighbor 



Last French War in the Valley 229 

Peter Labaree, who had come to begm a day's work at 
carpentering by appointment with the captain. Then — 

Mr. Johnson slipped on his jacket and trousers and stepped to the 
door to let him in. But by opening the door he opened a scene 
— terrible to describe. " Indians ! Indians ! " were the first words I 
heard. He sprang to his guns, but Labaree, heedless of danger, 
instead of closing the door to keep them out, began to rally our 
hired men up stairs for not rising earlier. But in an instant a crowd 
of savages, fixed horribly for war, rushed furiously in. 

They had been lying in ambush near the house, and as 
Labaree was entering sprang up and pushed Ijy him. 

I screamed [the Narrative goes on] and begged my friends to ask 
for quarter. By this time they were all over the house ; some up 
stairs, and some hauling my sister out of bed. Another had hold of 
me, and one was approaching Mr. Johnson, who stood in the middle 
of the floor to deliver himself up. But the Indian supposing he 
would make resistance and be more than his match, went to the 
door and brought three of his comrades, and the four bound him. 
I was led to the door fainting and trembling [she was then with 
child and within a few days of her time]. There stood my friend 
Labaree bound. Ebenezer Farnsworth, whom they found up cham- 
ber, they were putting in the same situation. And to complete the 
shocking scene, my three little children were driven naked to the 
place where I stood. On viewing myself I found that I too was 
naked. An Indian had plundered three gowns, who, on seeing my 
situation, gave me the whole. I asked another for a petticoat, but he 
refused it. After what little plunder their hurry would allow them 
to get was confusedly bimdled up, we were ordered to march. 

They were halted a few rods beyond the house, behind 
a rising ground, that the plunder might better be packed. 
While in the midst of this work an Indian, sent back pre- 
sumably to fire the house, returned on the run. Aaron 
Hosmer, who had hidden in the house and escaped capture, 
had given an alarm to the fort and a chase by the soldiers 



230 Connecticut River 

was feared. At this report the march was resumed in a 
jjanic. Mrs. Johnson was grasped by two savages, each at 
an arm, and rushed along through the thorny thickets. 
The loss of her shoe soon inflicted cruel cuts on her bare 
foot. The three men-prisoners with arms bound, and also 
Miriam Willard and the terrified children, were similai'ly 
conducted by their hideously jjainted masters. 

So they proceeded for tliree miles, when a halt was 
made for breakfast, the danger of pm-suit being apparently 
passed. It was learned afterward that no rescue force had 
been sent out, for Lieutenant Willard had dissuaded Cap- 
tain Stevens from despatching one lest the Indians, if at- 
tacked, should massacre the captives. The sylvan table 
was set forth with viands taken .with the other loot from 
the house, — bread, raisins, and apples, — but the prisoners 
had no stomach for the repast. "While the meal was in 
progress a riderless horse was sighted approaching, which 
the prisoners soon recognized as " Old Scoggin," Captain 
Stevens's horse. An Indian raised his weajjon to shoot 
him, when Captain Johnson interceded. By gestures he 
plead that the beast be spared for the " white squaw " to 
ride, Mrs. Johnson's condition having become pitiable. 
Accordingly "Old Scoggin" was caught instead of slain, 
and Mrs. Johnson was mounted upon him on a saddle of 
bags and blankets. Her bleeding feet were covered with 
moccasins provided by her Indian " master," and with 
Labaree's stockings which that knightly soul had stripped 
from his own bruised feet and "presented " to her. 

Thus they jogged on for seven miles when preparations 
were made to cross the River to the west side. Rafts of 
dry timber being constructed, Mrs. Johnson was put upon 
one of them, while her husband swam at its end and pushed 
it along J and Labaree swam the horse across. It being 




o 
2 



o 






Last French War in the Valley 231 

■now late in the afternoon, a stop was made at the landing 
place for a supper of porridge cooked in Mrs. Johnson's 
kettles, which the Indians had brought with their plunder. 
After supper six or eight more miles were covered, Mrs. 
Johnson again riding the horse. The encampment for the 
night was established under the trees in Wethersfield be- 
low Ascutney's graceful height. When the prisoners lay 
down for rest they were ingeniously bound so that escape 
was impossible. " The men were made secure in having 
their legs put in split sticks, somewhat like stocks, and 
tied to the limbs of trees too high to be reached. My 
sister . . . must lie between two Indians, with a cord 
thrown over her, and passing under each of them. The 
little children had blankets, and I was allowed one for my 
use. 

All were roused before sunrise, and after a break- 
fast of hot water gruel only, the signal " whoop " for the 
renewal of the march was sounded. Mrs. Johnson was 
lifted upon the horse, and Captain Johnson assigned to 
march by her side to hold her on, for she was now too 
weak to proceed unaided. When the procession had trav- 
elled on for an hour or two her supreme moment came : — 

I was taken with the pangs of child-birth. The Indians signified 
that we must go on to a brook. When we got there they showed 
some humanity by making a booth for me. . . . My children were 
crying at a distance, where they were held by their masters, and 
only my husband and sister to attend me, — none but mothers can 
figure to themselves my unhappy posture. The Indians kept aloof 
the whole time. About ten o'clock a daughter was born. They 
then brought me some articles of clothing for the child, which they 
had taken from the house. My master looked into the booth and 
clapped his hands for joy, saying " two monies for me, two monies 
for me ! " 

I was permitted to rest for the remainder of the day. The Indians 



232 Connecticut River 

Avere employed in making a bier for the prisoners to carry me on 
and another booth for my lodging during night. They brought a 
needle and two pins and some bark to tie the child's clothes, which 
they gave my sister, and a large wooden spoon to feed it with. . . . 
In the evening I was removed to the new booth. 

The spot where this birth took place, and the site of 
the previous night's encampment, were identified in the 
town of Cavendish nearly half a century afterward, when 
the child had herseK become a mother of children, and two 
inscribed stones were set up to indicate them. These tab- 
lets may yet be seen by the side of the main road lead- 
ing from Wethersfield through Cavendish to Reading. 
The actual birthplace is said to be about half a mile from 
the road, in the northeast corner of Cavendish. 

At sunrise of the morning following the child's birth 
Mrs. Johnson was roused with the others, and when the 
usual breakfast of meal and water was over, she was 
shifted, with the infant at her breast, to the litter which 
the Indians had prepared. The march was then taken up, 
the men captives bearing the litter, Mniam Willard and 
the boy on Scoggin, and the two little girls each on the 
back of her master. When only about two miles on the 
way the wearied litter-bearers, weakened by the scant fare 
that had been their jiortion, broke down imder their load. 
Thereupon the Indians by signs indicated that Mrs. Johnson 
must ride the horse or be left behind. Preferring this 
alternative to a miserable death alone in the forest, she 
was lifted to Scoggin's back in place of Miriam and the 
boy, while the kindly Labaree took the infant. In this 
order the party again started off at a " slow mournful 
pace." Once an hour the almost exhausted woman was 
taken from the horse and laid on the ground to rest. Thus 
her life was preserved through her second day of new 



Last French War in the Valley 233 

motherhood. That night the party bivouacked at the head 
of Black River Pond. The supper, mainly of gruel, was 
enriched with the broth of a hawk which one of the Indians 
had killed. Through the next day, opening chill and 
foggy, they plodded on across miry plains and over steep 
and broken hills. Labaree still carried the infant and 
nourished it with occasional sips of water gruel. The 
next day was like its predecessor, " an unvaried scene of 
fatigue." 

Now famine threatened the party. Two or three hunting 
bands sent out returned without game, and the last morsel 
of meal was gone. It was determined to sacrifice faithful 
old Scoggin. Accordingly at dusk of this day the horse 
was shot, and a few minutes after his flesh was broiling on 
the embers of a fire which the Indians had made with the 
help of punk that they carried in horns. While the hungry 
savages gorged themselves with these horse-steaks they 
offered the best parts to the captives, an act which " cer- 
tainly bordered on civility." And, says the narrative, "an 
epicure could not have catered nicer slices, nor in that 
situation served them up with more neatness." For 
Mrs. Johnson and the babe a broth was made, "which 
was rendered almost a luxury by the seasoning of roots." 
After this novel supper " countenances began to brighten ; 
those who had relished the meal exhibited new strength, 
and those who had only snuffed its effluvia confessed them- 
selves regaled. The evening was employed in drying and 
smoking what remained for futm-e use." The next morn- 
ing's breakfast was a feast of soup made from the pounded 
marrow-bones of old Scoggin and flavored with " every 
root, both sweet and bitter, that the woods afforded." Each 
of the captives partook of a.s much of the soup as " his 
feelings would allow." 



234 Connecticut River 

At the start of this day's march Mrs. Johnson was 
obliged to walk. Her master tied her petticoats with 
bark " as high as he sujjposed would be convenient for 
walking," and ordered her to fall in line. " With scarce 
strength to stand alone" she stumbled on for about half a 
mile, with her little boy and three Indians, lagging behind 
the rest. Then losing power to move further, she dropped 
in a faint as one of the Indians was raising his hatchet 
over her head. Upon her return to consciousness she 
heard her master angrily assailing the savage for attempt- 
ing to kill his prize, and saw how her life had been spared. 
Restarting, Captain Johnson helped her along for a few 
hours. Then faintness again overcame her. Another 
council was held while she lay gasping on the ground. At 
length her master cut some bark from a tree and made a 
pack-saddle for her husband's back, and to this she was 
lifted. They marched onward the rest of this day, Captain 
Johnson staggering under his load, his bare feet lacerated 
by the rough path. Labaree still kept the infant. Farns- 
worth carried one of the little girls, and the other rode as 
before on her master's back. Miriam Willard, strong in 
her young girlhood, walked easily, keeping pace with her 
lusty master. That night the Indians made more horse- 
broth for supper. Another booth was built for the ex- 
hausted mother. Next morning she found herself greatly 
refreshed from a good night's sleep. 

But further peril was in store for her. On this day's 
march she was made to ford a beaver-pond. When half 
way over, " up to the middle in the cold water," her strength 
failed and she became stiffened and motionless. Her hus- 
band was sent to her relief. Taking her in his arms he 
carried her across, and on the bank a fire was built at 
which she was warmed back to life. For the rest of this 




> 

o 






o 

O 

u 
c 



Last French War in the Valley 235 

day she again rode on the pack-saddle on her husband's 
back. Labaree still carried the infant and sustained her 
little life with bits of the horse-flesh which he would 
first chew and then put in the baby's mouth. On the af- 
ternoon of this day the party halted for a lunch of broiled 
duck, two savages sent out on a hunting scout having 
brought the fowl in as their sole bag. One of the branches 
of Otter Creek was then forded. In the passage Labaree, 
tripping in the swift current, nearly lost the infant. As 
she was floating down stream he saved her by catching a 
corner of her blanket and pulling her in. On the opposite 
bank proofs of the Indians' sagacity were foimd. On their 
journey down from the north they had killed a bear at 
this point. The entrails had been cleansed and filled with 
the fat of the animal, and suspended from the limb of a 
tree. Beside the tree also lay a bag of floiu" and some 
tobacco : all stores for use on the return journey. Now 
quite a sumptuous feast was set forth. The flour was made 
into a pudding with the bear's grease for a relishing sauce, 
and a rich broth seasoned with snake-root was prepared. 
The tobacco was shared with the men captives, and they 
derived what comfort they could in their sorry condition 
from an after-dinner smoke. With the close of the next 
day, however, famine again threatened, and the following 
morning's breakfast was of the scantiest. StiU they were 
pressed on painfully till nightfall. Then at last the cruel 
tramp ended with their arrival at East Bay, on Lake 
Champlain. After supper from a ground-squirrel and some 
broth, all embarked in canoes for the voyage across the 
lake to Crown Point. 

Fortune was now kind to them for four days. The 
French commander received them with much show of 
hospitality. They were provided with "brandy in profusion, 



236 Connecticut Hiver 

a good dinner, and a change of linen." Mrs. Johnson's 
children were all decently clad, and the infant was so 
decked out in French raiment that her Puritan mother 
could not recognize the "strange thing." But on the 
fourth day their miseries were renewed with their return 
to then- masters and the start on another journey. All 
were crowded in one little vessel and so made the passage 
to the St. John's fort, a hard voyage of three days. At 
this place they were politely entertained by the French 
commander as at Crown Point. The next morning they 
were off for Chambly. That night Mrs. Johnson lodged 
on a bed for the first time since her captivity. Next 
morning all were off in canoes for Sorel. On their arrival 
at nightfall, a kind friar took them into his house. The 
good monk cheered them in the morning with a relishing 
breakfast and " drank their better healths " in a brimming 
tumbler of brandy. That day they reached their destina- 
tion, — the Indian village of St. Francis, — where their 
masters belonged. 

Their arrival here was signalled by a whirlwind of 
" whoops, yells, shrieks, and screams." With their mas- 
ters they were made to " run the gauntlet " between a 
double line of braves and squaws. But no hard blows were 
suffered, each receiving only a slight tap on the shoulder. 
Now they were finally separated, each master taking his 
prizes to his own quarters. Eventually all l)ut the little 
boy, Sylvanus, were sold to Frenchmen. Mrs. Johnson's 
master being a hunter, exchanged her with much for- 
mality, for the boy whom he wanted to attend him on his 
hunting excursions. Her new master was the son-in-law 
of the grand sachem, and she with her infant was adopted 
into his family. The others were early taken to Montreal 
and sold there. Fortunately for them then- purchasers 



Last French War in the Valley 237 

were all " persons of great respectability." Captain John- 
son fell to a leading man. Susanna, the eldest of the two 
little girls, was bought by three affluent French maiden 
ladies ; and Polly, by the Mayor of Montreal for his wife's 
pleasure. Miriam Willard passed to good hands, being 
taken into the influential Du Quesne family. Labaree and 
Farnsworth both found easy masters, though they chafed 
as bondsmen. 

Such was the situation of these captives when Captain 
Johnson was given a leave of absence on parole to return 
to New England for cash for their redemption. Before he 
started Mrs. Johnson and the babe had been bought by the 
Du Quesnes and were in Montreal near the others. Later, 
little Polly was traded for and restored to the mother. 
While at Montreal the infant was baptized and was given 
the names of Louisa, for Mme. Dvi Quesne, and Captive in 
token of the circumstances of her birth. 

The Narrative goes on with details of the life in cap- 
tivity which extended through four years or more. Among 
other trying experiences there were prison hardships for 
Mrs. Johnson and her husband in Montreal and Quebec, 
for he broke his parole through detention in Massachusetts, 
curiously enough, as a suspected spy. So his lines were 
doubly hard. Mrs. Johnson with Captive and Polly was 
the first to be released. She got back to the Valley by 
the roundabout way of Europe, taking shijD from Quebec 
for England. Captain Johnson was redeemed in the spring 
of 1758. Early the next summer he joined the expedi- 
tion against Ticonderoga at the head of a company, and 
soon afterward met his cruel fate, being killed in action. 
The same summer Sylvanus was restored to his mother. 
He was brought back to the Valley by Major (afterward 
General) Israel Putnam. He came with the redeemed 



238 Connecticut River 

Howe family, — Jemima Howe, the "Fair Captive" of. 
Humphrey's Life of Putnam, and her children, who were 
captured at Fort Bridgman in Hinsdale, the year after the 
taking of the Johnsons. Sylvanus's four years of savage 
life had given him all the characteristics of the Indian. 
He could speak no English and only a little French, but 
in the language of the Indians was perfect. He could 
bend a bow and wing an arrow, and could brandish a 
tomahawk with the best of the braves. By degrees his 
Indian habits wore off. But to the day of his death, and he 
reached the age of eighty-four, he retained his attachment 
to the simple life of the forest. His latter years were 
spent in Walpole, and he was an expert salmon fisher 
about Bellows Falls. Susanna came back in the summer 
of 1760. She returned with her kinsfolk, Joseph Willard 
and family of Lancaster. These Willards, father, mother, 
and five children, had been captured at their home a few 
months earlier, and, taken to Canada, had reached Montreal 
only a few days before its surrender. Susanna was now 
quite a cultivated young woman, for the good sisters Jais- 
son had provided her a " polite education." She did not 
know her mother when they met, and could speak no 
English. 

Mrs. Johnson returned to Charlestown in the autumn 
of 1759 and resumed her life on the same spot from which 
she and the rest had been taken. Three years later she 
married John Hastings, a worthy first settler at No. 4, 
and reared a second family of children. By her two mar- 
riages she had fourteen children in all. She lived to the 
age of eighty, and could count thirty-nine grandchildren. 
Of the daughters who had been in captivity with her, 
Susan married Captain Samuel Wetherbee, afterward an 
active soldier in the Revolution, and became the mother 



Last French War in the Valley 239 

of fifteen children, among whom were five at two births. 
Polly married Colonel Timothy Bedell of Haverhill, up the 
River, who became a captain of rangers in the Revolution, 
and later a major-general in the New Hampshire militia. 
Though dying at the early age of thirty-seven, Polly bore 
several children. Captive married Colonel George Kimball 
of Charlestown. In 1798 they removed to Lower Canada 
and there the remainder of her life was spent. She had 
four children. Miriam Willard married the Rev. Phinehas 
Whitney, minister at Shirley, Massachusetts, for upward 
of half a century. She lived but seven years after her 
marriage, however, and left no children. 

Labaree and Farnsworth both returned to Charlestown 
and resumed the farmer's life which they pursued in peace 
till they reached old age. Labaree escaped from bondage 
and suffered many hardships on his way back through the 
wilderness. Farnsworth was redeemed. Labaree upon 
his return took up a tract of three hundred acres two miles 
north of the village, and became the most northerly settler 
on the River in New Hampshire. He lived to the age of 
seventy-nine. Farnsworth took a farm in North Charles- 
town, and here was his home tUl his death in his seventy- 
eighth year. 

So peacefully closes this romance of real life, only one 
of the many which the records of the Valley disclose abun- 
dant in thrilling detail and rich in " atmosphere." 

In the old burying-groimd of Charlestown the traveller 
may see a monument to the memory of Mrs. Johnson and 
her fellow captives. It was set up with quiet ceremony 
thirty-five years ago by descendants of the Johnsons and 
of worthy Peter Labaree. 

The summer of 1755 was marked by raids of Indians 



240 Connecticut River 

irom Canada swooping down the Valley to and below the 
Massachusetts line. They had become emboldened by the 
failure of the expedition of this season against Crown 
Point, and by the belief that the frontiers were more than 
usually exposed. About midsummer alarming news came 
to the Valley. Five hundred Indians were said to be col- 
lecting in Canada for an expedition to exterminate the 
whole white population along the River. Shortly before, 
Philip, a St. Francis sachem, had appeared in one village 
after another with friendly demonstrations and the pre- 
tence of need of provisions. It was afterward learned 
that he was a spy, to ascertain the state of defence. 

The most serious raids, presumed to have been in con- 
nection with the plan of extermination, were toward the 
close of the summer. On their down journey the maraud- 
ers crossed the River to Charlestown, slaughtered a lot 
of the settlers' cattle, and carried off the flesh. Shortly 
after a band appeared below Bellows Falls at Walpole. 
Two settlers, Daniel Twichell and John Flynt, back on 
the hills getting out timber for oars, were attacked and 
killed. One was scalped ; the other cut open and his heart 
taken out and laid in pieces on his breast. This event 
made " a solemn impression " on the scattered settlers. 
They imagined that Twichell's spirit hovered over them 
crying for vengeance on the savages. A rock in the River 
off the Wal^jole meadows where he used to fish with un- 
failing success was given his name, and good luck came to 
the after-fishers at Twichell's Rock. 

Another band, or perhaps the same one, appeared at 
Hinsdale and attacked a group of workers in the woods. 
Two were killed, a third escaped. A few days later, in 
the same settlement, Caleb Howe, Benjamin Gaffield, and 
Hilkiah Grout were ambushed while returning from the 



Last French War in the Valley 241 

fields. Howe was killed. Gaffield was drowned in at- 
tempting to cross the River, and Grout escaped. The 
assailants made for Bridgman's Fort in which the families 
of these men were living. It was now dusk. Hearing 
footsteps and suf)posing their husbands were returning, 
the women opened the gate to receive them. Instead the 
savages with a whoop rushed in and captured them all. 
Fourteen women and children were thus taken, among 
them Jemima Howe, " The Fair Captive," Caleb Howe's 
wife, and her little ones, and marched to Canada. 

Then came the attack in force upon Walpole and the 
siege of John Kilburn's house, with " Kilbuxn's Fight," of 
August 17, the most remarkable conflict in the Valley of 
this war. Here is its animated story, with a side story 
of the clever stratagem of Colonel Bellows outside the 
Bellows Fort. 

The attacking party is said by the historians to have 
numbered fully four hundred. The Kilburn household 
embraced but six persons. These were John Kilbiu-u, the 
master, a virile man of about fifty; his wife Ruth, a 
sturdy young matron ; their son John, in his eighteenth 
year ; their daughter Hetty, a fine strapping girl ; and one 
Peak, presumably a farm helper, with his son, about young 
John Kilburn's age. The dwelling was a stout log-house 
surrounded by palisades. It stood above the meadows 
under the shadow of Falls Mountain, now Kilburn Peak, 
named for its hero. It was about a mile and a half dis- 
tant from Colonel Bellows' s fort. 

At about noon Kilburn and Peak and the two youths 
were returning home to dinner from their work in the 
field, when one of them discovered the red legs of Indians 
among some alders, " as thick as grasshoppers." Quietly 
but rapidly gaining the house where Mrs. Kilbmn and 



242 Connecticut River 

"Hetty, unaware of danger, were preparing the noon meal, 
they bolted the door and made ready for defence. In a 
few minutes they saw a line of savages crawling up a bank 
east of the house. As the red men crossed a foot-path 
one by one, one hundred and ninety-seven of them were 
counted by the group within. About the same number, 
it is said, remained in ambush near the mouth of Cold 
River and later joined in the fight. 

Meanwhile, or earlier, an attempt had been made by 
part of the band to waylay and cut off Colonel Bellows 
and thirty of his men who were at the mill about a mile 
east of Kilburn's. In this enterprise, however, they were 
thwarted by the colonel's ingenious tactics. He and the 
men, each with a bag of flom' on his back, had left the mill 
and were on their way to the Bellows Fort when their 
dogs began to growl, thus betraying the neighborhood of 
Indians, though none was seen. Thereupon the colonel 
directed the men to throw off the l^ags, get down on all 
fours, crawl to a rise of land near by, and upon reaching 
the top spring to their feet all together, give one whoop, 
then instantly drop again out of sight in the sweet-fern 
that covered the bank. This manoeuvre had the expected 
effect in drawing the savages from their ambush. At the 
sound of the whoop, believing themselves discovered, the 
whole body rose from the bushes among which they had 
lain in a semi-circle aroimd the path which the colonel's 
men were to have followed. At their showing the hidden 
party fired a volley, and this so disconcerted them that, 
without a shot from their side, they darted back into the 
bushes and disappeared. Then the colonel's party took the 
shortest cut for the fort, and there prepared for a siege. 
But none came. 

The Fight at Kilburn's was preceded by a demand for 



Last French War in the Valley 243 

surrender and its scornful refusal. It was made by Philip 
the spy whom Kilburn had sheltered on his previous visit, 
and supplied with flour, flint, and other provisions. Com- 
ing forward to a protecting tree, Philip cried : 

" Old John ! Young John ! I know ye ! Come out here. 
We give you good quarter." 

"Quarter!" vociferated Kilburn ''in a voice of thim- 
der." " You black rascals begone, or we'll quarter you ! " 

Upon this defiance Philip withdrew to the ambush, and 
ten minutes later the war-whoop rang out as if " all the 
devils in hell had been let loose." The assault was sig- 
nalled with a rush. Kilburn got the first fire, and believed 
that he saw Philip drop. A shower of bullets fell upon the 
house, and the roof became a " perfect riddle-sieve." 
While the main body was engaged in the assault others 
were butchering the cattle and destroying the grain. The 
little garrison kept up an almost incessant fire through the 
small portholes, picking off the savages as they appeared 
in the open with the precision of sharpshooters. For 
greater convenience they poured their powder into their 
hats. The women loaded the guns. There was fortu- 
nately a spare set, so that when one got hot from frequent 
firing another was ready. The hot ones were cooled by the 
housewife in a trough of water in readiness to serve their 
turn again. After a while the stock of lead ran short. 
Then Hetty stretched blankets in the upper part of the 
roof to catch the enemy's balls which penetrated one side 
of it and fell short of the other. These the two Amazons 
immediately ran into new bullets, and before they were 
cool the men had fired them back to the enemy. At the 
height of the fight a few ventm^esome savages approached 
close to the house and attempted to batter down the front 
door; but the marksmen within cut them off at each 



244 Connecticut River 

attempt. Most of the time, however, the enemy fought 
from behind logs and stumps. 

The siege continued through the afternoon and till sun- 
down. Then the assailants began gradually to withdraw, 
and by dusk all had departed carrying their wounded with 
them. It is supposed that they went directly back to Can- 
ada. At all events the campaign of extermination was 
abandoned, and this was the last raid of a large body of 
Indians in force in the Valley. 

The Kilburn garrison marvellously weathered the Fight 
with only one member hurt. Peak, exposing himself at a 
port-hole, received a ball in his thigh. In spite of the 
wound he kept on fighting. But lacking surgical aid the 
poor fellow died on the fifth day after. Kilburn survived 
to a green old age, attaining his eighty-fifth year. Througli 
and for some time after his day the homestead was re- 
tained on the same spot, and he lived to see his fourth 
generation here enjoying " the benefits of a high civil- 
ization." A century or so after his death professors and 
students of Amlierst College frequenting Falls Mountain 
fittingly gave it the name of Kilburn Peak to perpetuate 
this brave man's memory. The site of the Figlit is to-day 
one of beavitiful Walpole's most notable landmarks. 

While the assault upon Walpole was the last raid of 
the Indians in force, roving bands continued to infest the 
frontier River towns till close on to the end of the war, 
killing or capturing groups of settlers at their work and 
committing various depredations. As before, Charlestown 
was the main svifferer. On a summer day in 1756 a band 
swept into the settlement and waylaid Lieutenant Moses 
Willard, the father of Mrs. Johnson, and his son. Mr. 
WiUard was killed, and the yoimg man escaped, fleeing to 







ri 



j3 

'{2 



o 

C/3 



O 

o 



^ 



Last French War in the A'alley 245 

the fort with a spear which the Indians had flung at him 
sticking in his side. The same season, Winchester and 
Hinsdale below were visited. In the spring of the next 
year, 1757, a band of Indians and French soldiers again 
came upon Charlestown, and at a time when only a handful 
of men were in the fort. Three groups of settlers out for 
their day's occupations were attacked. It was the morn- 
ing of the 1 9th of April, historic date of after years. One 
group was going to the mill ; another to a maple sugar 
camp in the woods ; the third was on a hunting trip. The 
men bound for the mill were first waylaid and the mill 
was burned. Next those at the sugar camp were intercept- 
ed, and lastly the himters. Five were taken off to Canada 
and sold there as usual. One of them was Deacon Adams 
of the town church. Only two survived their captivity. 
These were David Farnsworth, another of the Farnsworth 
family of first settlers, who escaped, and Thomas Robbins, 
one of the hunting party. The next summer a band am- 
bushed Asahel Stebbins's house, killed him and captured 
his wife. With her they also took off Isaac Parker. The 
same season the lower Valley region about the Massachu- 
setts line was once more raided. At Hinsdale Captain 
Moore and his son were killed, the rest of his family cap- 
tured, and their house burned down. These were the last 
raids into the valley settlements. 

After the spring of 1757 Number 4 was under the 
jurisdiction of the king's officers. The fort thereafter was 
the rendezvous of various colonial regiments, and a head- 
quarters of rangers. Shortly after the raid of April 19 a 
new regiment of New Hampshire men, raised to join in 
another Crown Point expedition, rendezvoused here. This 
was Colonel John Goffe's famous regiment which, placed 
at the rear of the troops leaving Fort Henry after the 



246 Connecticut River 

capitulation to Montcalm, was so seriously cut up in the 
treacherous massacre by Montcalm's Indian allies. 

The closing performances in the Valley of this war were 
the cutting of the Crown Point Road from Number 4 to 
Crown Point, and the daring exploits of the companies of 
rangers principally under the brothers Stark, John and 
William, and the redoubtable Robert Rogers. 

The cutting of the Crown Point Road was a remark- 
able achievement. The Road properly began on the west 
side of the River where is now Springfield, Vermont, start- 
ing at the landing-place of " Wentworth's Ferry," near the 
mouth of Black River, whence it proceeded along the old 
Indian trail through the woods and over the mountains. 
Wentworth's Ferry, named for Governor Benning Went- 
worth, crossed the River from a point about two miles above 
Number 4 : or a little above the present bridge, over which 
the Charlestown and Springfield trolley line runs. It was 
used for the transportation of troops and supplies from the 
establishment of Number 4 through the Revolution. The 
Crown Point Road can to-day be traced in Springfield from 
the River bank. A monument set up by the townspeople 
some years ago marks the place where it crosses the present 
river road. Upon it, or close by, the first settlers of Spring- 
field established their homesteads. It followed the right 
bank of Black River to the present township of Ludlow, 
the route there taking to the moimtains. 

The project of building this Road originated with the 
Massachusetts government. So early as the spring of 1756 
an order was passed in the General Court at Boston for an 
examination of a route by "the directest course " from Num- 
ber 4 to Crown Point, and Colonel Israel Williams of Hat- 
field was particularly charged with this duty. In the 



Last French War in the A'alley 247 

following su mm er Lord Loudon took similar steps for a 
military road from the Connecticut, and obtained from 
Colonel Williams a topographical sketch of the country, 
compiled mostly from reports of oiScers of scouting parties. 
But nothing further was done at this time owing to the 
numbers of hostile Indians infesting the region. The pro- 
ject was not renewed till 1759, when General Amherst had 
succeeded to the command and victories had come to the 
English side. 

The first cutting was on the west side of the Green 
Mountains. This was made in the smnmer of 1759, under 
the direction of General John Stark and Major John 
Hawkes. The link between Number 4 and the mountains 
was built the following summer. This work was done by 
Colonel John Goffe and his renewed regiment of eight 
hundred New Hampshire men. They had first opened a 
road from the Merrimack to the Connecticut, clearing a 
mere bridle-path from then starting point as far as Keene, 
New Hampshire. They arrived at Number 4 in June. 
Crossuig the River they first built a large blockhouse close 
by the ferry landing and enclosed it in palisades, as a pro- 
tection in case of trouble. They were forty-five days in 
cutting the Road to the foot of the moimtains. At every 
mUe they set up a post, and twenty-six of these mile-posts 
had been placed when the mountains were reached. Their 
baggage was carried as far as the mountains on ox-teams ; 
then pack-horses were employed. Along the way they 
occasionally saw the trails of Indians, but none dared molest 
them. Such was the speed with which the work was 
despatched that the Road was completed in ample season 
for the regiment to participate in the final expedition 
against Montreal. 

Of the exploits of the rangers, that of Robert Rogers 



248 Connecticut River 

and his band in the destruction of St. Francis, the strong- 
hold of the St. Francis Indians, was the most difficult and 
perilous, and the greatest in importance and consequences. 
This sanguinary affair occurred in October, 1759, soon 
after the cutting of the upper part of the Crown Point 
Road. It was the most spectacular performance of the 
war in this region, and its story has served as the frame 
for many a tale of adventure. 

Major Rogers was at Crown Point when he received his 
orders from Amherst to proceed to the attack. He was to 
remember "the barbarities committed by the enemy's Indian 
scoundrels on every occasion where they had had opportuni- 
ties of showing their infamous cruelties toward his Majes- 
ty's subjects." He was to take his revenge, but, " although 
the villians have promiscuously murdered women and child- 
ren of all ages," he was to kiU or hurt no woman or child. 

At the start Rogers's company consisted of two hundred 
men, but this number was reduced by various calamities to 
one hundred and forty-two before he reached his destination. 
From Crown Point they rowed in batteaux up Lake Cham- 
plain to Missisquoi Bay, — Gray Lock's old site. Here the 
boats and provisions were left with a guard, and the march 
into the lonely wilderness begun. After two days' march- 
ing the guard left at Missisquoi overtook them with the 
alarming report that a force of three hundred French and 
Indians had seized the boats and provisions and were on 
their trail. They only pressed on the more rapidly. 

On the twenty-second day after leaving Crown Point 
they were within three miles of the village. It was sighted 
by a lookout who had climbed a tall tree. At dusk they 
halted in the forest on the outskirts of the village. When 
night had fallen Rogers with two of his men, each disguised 
as Indians, entered the village and passed through it undis- 



Last French War in the A'alley 249 

covered. They found the people at a festival celebrating 
a wedding, all unconscious of danger in their neighborhood. 
Rogers determined to make the attack before daybreak 
when the village would be in slumber. He divided his 
force into three sections and posted each to advantage. At 
three o'clock the order was given to advance silently and 
quickly. The surprise was complete. As Rogers wrote in 
his journal, " the Rangers marched up to the very doors of 
the wigwams unobserved, and several squads made choice 
of the wigwams they would attack. There was little use 
of the musket. The Rangers leaped into the dwellings 
and made sine work with the hatchet and knife." Two- 
thirds of the Indian warriors were slain. When the day 
dawned a horrid sight met the gaze of the assailants which 
gave an '' edge " to their fury. It was the spectacle of 
more than six himdred scalps of their countrymen, trophies 
of former barbarities, elevated on poles and waving in the 
air. They set fire to all the wigwams but three which they 
reserved for their own use as headquarters. Many women 
and children perished in the flames, although none was 
deliberately killed. Valuable spoil was taken, for the vil- 
lage had been enriched with the plunder of the frontiers 
and the profit of sales of captives. It also had a church, 
which some French Jesuits had erected, adorned with plate. 
Here were a silver image of the Virgin Mary weighing ten 
pounds, crosses and pictures, wax candles shedding their 
soft light over the altar ; and in the beKry a bell brought 
from France. The invaders took off the silver image, and 
of the other treasures all that they could conveniently carry, 
together with quantities of wampum, mattings and cloth- 
ing, and two hundred guineas in gold. Only one of the 
invaders was killed, — an Indian of the friendly bands in 
Stockbridge, Massachusetts ; and seven were wounded, one 
of them an officer. 



250 Connecticut River 

The work of destruction complete, Rogers, without 
waiting for rest, reassembled his men and ordered the 
retreat, for attack from the pursuers in their rear was 
feared. With them were started on the march five Eng- 
lishmen whom they had found prisoners in the village, and 
about two hundred Indian captives. Tlie route deter- 
mined upon was by way of Lake Memphremagog, the 
Coos country, and the Connecticut to Number 4. In an- 
ticipation of a return by this route, Amherst had ordered 
supplies sent up from Number 4 to the mouth of the lower 
Ammonoosuc at Barnet. It was a march of hardship from 
the start, and before long it became tragic. 

They kept in a body for eight days, obliged meanwhile 
to let their prisoners go, for their provisions were almost 
exhausted. Then they divided into three parties and 
scattered, each party under an experienced leader, to make 
for the rendezvous at the Ammonoosuc' s mouth as best 
they covild. Rogers and the men with him were over- 
taken by the enemy and twice attacked. Several were 
killed, or taken captive. After mvich suffering from cold, 
footsore, and hunger, the remnant of his party first reached 
the rendezvous. But here to their horror were no provi- 
sions ; only the embers of a white man's fire indicating 
the recent presence of friends. It afterward appeared that 
supplies had been duly forwarded according to Amherst's 
order, but that the officer in charge, after waiting two 
days and fearing an attack, had hastened l>ack to Number 
4, taking them with him ; an act for which he was de- 
servedly censured. Rogers's only hope now being to get to 
Number 4 for succor, he constructed a raft of dry pine 
trees, and with two companions embarked upon it to fioat 
down our River. Of this perilous voyage Rogers's own 
account is the most grapliic : 



Last French War in the Valley 251 

The current carried us down the stream in the middle of the river 
where we kept our miserable vessel with such paddles as could be 
split and hewn with small hatchets. The second day we reached 
White River falls, and very narrowly escaped running over them. 
The raft went over and was lost ; but our remaining strength enabled 
us to land and march by the falls. At the foot of them Captain 
Ogden and the Ranger killed some red squirrels and a partridge, 
while I constructed another raft. Not being able to cut the trees I 
burnt them down, and burnt them at projjer lengths. This was our 
third day's work after leaving our companions. The next day we 
floated down to Watoquichie [Water-Queeche] falls. . . . Here we 
landed, and Captain Ogden held the raft by a withe of hazel bushes 
while we went below the falls to swim in, board and paddle it ashore ; 
this being our only hope of life, as we had not strength to make a 
new raft. I succeeded in securing it ; and the next morning we 
floated down within a short distance of Number 4. Here we found 
several men cutting timber who relieved and assisted us to the fort. 

Immediately upon their arrival a canoe was despatched 
up the River with provisions for those left at the rendez- 
vous ; and two days later Rogers returned with two more 
canoes laden with supplies for the other parties if they 
should appear. The few survivors subsequently arrived 
in a pitiable condition. They had suljsisted on such small 
animals as they could kill, with roots, nuts, birch-bark, 
their leather strajjs, and their moccasins. 

The war ended with the Valley at last freed from its 
traditional foe. Number 4 remained through the Revolu- 
tion a frontier fort of importance. To-day its site is 
marked by a boulder erected by the town. And " Number 
4 " traced in the green of the neat park opposite the rail- 
way station greets the eye of the traveller as he alights 
from the train. 



XVIII 

The War of the Grants 

Land-Fever following the Conquest of Canada — Prospecting in the rich Upper 
Valley — Winter Surveys for Tiers of Towns on both Sides of the River — 
Great Activity of Wentworth's Grants-Mill — Wholesale Issue of Charters 
— Form of these Instruments — The Gauntlet again Thrown Down to New 
York — Sharp Tilts between the Governors — The King's Order declaring 
the River the Boundary Line — Conflicts with New York Officers and 
Courts over West Side Titles — Rise of the " Green Mountain Boys." 

UPON the assurance of tranquillity following the con- 
quest of Canada and the scattering of the Indian 
tribes, schemes for the occupation of the Valley's upper 
reaches were immediately renewed. Northward beyond 
the English outposts — Charlestown on the Connecticut 
and Salisbury on the Merrimack — still lay the unbroken 
wilderness, save a few spots of cleared land and the cuttings 
in the woods made for military purposes. 

Soon speculators, adventurers, and prospective settlers 
were pressing for footholds in this vast rich region, and a 
veritable land-fever set in. By spring of 1761 Governor 
Benning Wentworth was prepared to start up his opera- 
tions in New Hampshire grants on a larger and bolder 
scale than before. Now his project embraced three tiers 
of townships on either side of the Connecticut. Upon the 
completion of a new survey he was issuing his charters 
with astonishing rapidity. This survey had begun in the 
spring of 1760, but was not finished till the next year. 
Joseph Blanchard of Dunstable, working on the ice in the 
bleak month of March, carried it from Charlestown as far 

252 




X 
o 



o 



u 
pq 
u 

H 



The War of the Grants 253 

as the Lower Coos. Hubartes Neal finished it to the 
Upper Coos, above the Fifteen-Miles Falls. Stones or 
stakes were set up or trees marked on the River's banks, 
six miles apart, to indicate the corners of the proposed 
townships, each to be six miles square. From the plan of 
this survey, deposited in the land office at Portsmouth, then 
the seat of the New Hampshire government, Governor 
Wentworth took the courses and distances for his charters. 
These often indefinite and inaccurate marks led to various 
heated disputes over boundaries between townships. 

Sixty township grants were turned out diu-ing the 
summer and autumn of 1761. Before the close of 1763 
the impressive total of one hundred and thirty eight had 
been reached. These grants extended up the Valley on 
the east side of the River as far north as Northumberland, 
and on the west side to Maidstone. They also reached 
across the present Vermont westward to an imaginary line 
assumed to be twenty miles east of the Hudson, and above 
the Hudson to Lake Champlain. Thus the gauntlet was 
again thrown down to the province of New York. 

Wentworth's charters were all of one form. Each 
township was divided into shares, generally sixty-eight in 
number. One share was reserved for the first settled 
minister, — the orthodox one ; one for a glebe for the 
Chiu"ch of England ; one for the Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, established in England ; 
and one for a school ; while five hundred acres, accounted 
as two shares, Wentworth reserved for himself. As soon 
as fifty families were become actual residents on a grant 
the township was to have liberty of holding a weekly mar- 
ket and town fairs semi-monthly. All pine trees within a 
township fit for masts in the royal navy were to be pre- 
served for the king, and none of them was to be cut or 



254 Connecticut River 

felled without a royal license. One shilling " proclama- 
tion money" for every hundred acres settled or possessed 
was to be paid yearly after the expiration of ten years from 
the date of the charter. 

To several of the earlier townships Wentworth gave the 
names of the ducal house of Lancaster ; and that of the 
family manor of the Wentworths in England — Bretton 
Hall, at Bretton, County York — subsequently appeared in 
Bretton Woods, which became the town of Carroll, at the 
base of the White Mountains. In these acts, and in other 
circumstances, local historians see evidence of an intention 
to erect an American baronage in this fair region. 

The grants-mill ran on merrily without check, and with 
accumulating profits to the thrifty governor, till the close 
of 1763. Then New York again took action. Lieut. Gov- 
ernor Cadwallader Colden issued his proclamation (Decem- 
ber 28, 1763) reasserting the validity of the claim of New 
York to the territory west of the river ; formally assuming 
jurisdiction over it ; and commanding the sheriff of Albany 
Coimty to make returns of the names of all persons who 
had taken possession therein under New Hampshire titles. 
Governor Wentworth responded with a counter proclama- 
tion (March 13, 1764), pronouncing the Duke-of-York 
grants to be obsolete ; justifying the claim of New Hamp- 
shire to a bound as far westward as the bounds of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut; assuring the settlers that the 
crovni would confirm his grants as issued should the juris- 
diction be altered ; exhorting them not to be intimidated ; 
and ordering the civil officers to exercise jurisdiction as 
far westward as the grants had been establislied and to 
" prosecute all disturbers of the peace." 

Meanwhile New York had made two shrewder moves, 
and these ultimately gave her the game. One was the 



The War of the Grants 255 

quiet despatching of a "representation " of the matter from 
her point of view to the Lords of Trade and Plantations in 
England ; the other, an express application to the crown 
for a declaration of the boundary line. The king acted 
accordingly, and under date of July 20, 1764, he declared 
" the western banks of the River Connecticut to be the 
boundary line between the said two provinces." 

The settlers on Wentworth's west side grants at first 
accepted the king's decision with equanimity, for they as- 
sumed that their titles were confirmed, as Wentworth's 
proclamation had assured them they would be were the 
jurisdiction changed. But the term " to be " in the deci- 
sion proved a stumbling-block by which they were wofuUy 
tripped. New Hampshhe interpreted this phrase as " de- 
signed to express the future and not to refer to the past." 
New York construed it as " a declaration not only of what 
was to be for the time to come, but of what was and always 
had been" that province's eastern limit. In accordance 
with this construction New York declared all the west side 
New Hampshire grants illegal, and ordered the settlers to 
surrender their charters and take out new titles from her. 

Thus the War of the Grants began. The west side 
settlers were thrown into much distress. Obtaining the 
new grants involved more fees and other expenses which 
they could ill bear. Some, however, comphed with the 
demand without friction. Others protested, but finally 
bought their lands a second time. More refused, and de- 
fied the New York officers. Actions of ejectment were 
begun in two counties which New York set up, one on each 
side of the Green Movmtains. The actions were of course 
decided in favor of New York. Associations were formed 
among the resisting settlers against the New York officers 
and courts. So arose the " Green Mountain Boys." 



256 Connecticut River 

The settlers also appealed their case to the crown, and 
at length, in 1767, the tables were tiu-ned on New York, 
when a royal order was obtained forbidding her governor 
to regrant lands covered by the New Hampshire title until 
the king's further pleasure in the matter should be made 
known. Notwithstanding this inhibition, however, Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Golden persisted in his policy of aggres- 
sion, and the settlers continued their resistance. At the 
same time Governor Wentworth was keeping up the issue 
of his grants, confining them, however, since the king's 
order of 1764, to the east side of the River. Such was the 
situation when the Revolution came. 

Benning Wentworth withdrew from the governorship 
in 1766, — virtually superseded tliovigh permitted to resign, 
for in the latter years of his administration of a quarter of 
a centiu-y he had succeeded in pleasing neither king nor 
people, — and then began the reign of his broader, abler 
and courtlier nephew, John Wentworth, last of the royal 
New Hampshire governors. Governor John continued the 
issue of grants on the line of Governor Benning's opera- 
tions, but with far less speculative energy, and with an eye 
more to the prosperous establishing of plantations than to 
his own emolument. It was Governor John whose persua- 
sion and generous aid brought the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock 
to the Upper Valley and established Dartmouth College on 
the Beautiful River's bank. By him the subject of the 
college was first introduced to the Earl of Dartmouth, his 
intimate friend ; and Dartmouth's patronage in the venture 
was due directly to his influence. But Governor Benning, 
while in oflfice, gave the laud, the tract of five hundred 
acres, upon which the college was erected. After the death 
of Benning, in 1771 (leaving the bulk of his estate to his 



The War of the Grants 257 

youthful wife, lowly but lovely Martha Hilton, the " Lady 
Wentworth " of Longfellow's poetic fiction), the New 
Hampshire Council determined that the reservation of five 
hundred acres for himself in each of his charter-grants did 
not convey the title to him. So these reserved portions 
were offered to private settlers who quickly took them up. 

The settlers on the grants along the River emigrated 
for the most part up from the Connecticut Colony; the 
others were principally from Massachusetts. Those on the 
grants west of the Green Mountains were also largely from 
Connecticut, with a considerable number from Massachu- 
setts and a few from Rhode Island. Coming from these 
colonies and imbued with the spirit of local self-government, 
they had little in common with New Hampshire and its 
centralized system ; less with New York. Accordingly, 
thus isolated in the wilderness, they set up then- townships 
upon a system of local government which, although fash- 
ioned after that of the Connecticut and Massachusetts town, 
became in its development so much more democratic as prac- 
tically to convert each township into an independent republic. 

The Green Mountains separated the grants into two 
distinct sections, and constituted a formidable barrier to 
mutual intercourse. Differences other than geographical 
also existed between the two sections, sufficient, ultimately, 
in the midst of the Revolution, to produce two separate 
and diverse schemes of state-making. These schemes came 
to be pressed by two parties, the Bennington and the Col- 
lege parties, so called respectively. The former were di- 
rected from the political centre west of the mountains in 
Bennington, the latter from the seat of Dartmouth College. 

With the planting of the college, the College party 
shortly developed, forwarding their scheme for a state on 
the grants. 



XIX 

Dartmouth College and "New Connecticut" 

Rival Schemes of State-Making — College Party versus Beimington Party — 
Germ of the College Party : Wheelock's Fixture of Dartmouth in the 
Upper Valley — Character of the Pioneer Settlements here — The College 
District the Political Centre — "Dresden" and College Hall — Secession 
of East Side Towns — Notable State Papers by the Dresden Statesmen — 
Erection of the State of New Connecticut at Westminster — Substitution 
of Vermont for New Connecticut — The Constitutional Convention at 
Windsor — Vermont Launched "amidst the Tumults of War" — Short- 
Lived Union vrith East-Side Towns. 

THE rival schemes of state-making ripened with the 
Revolution. That of the College party originally 
contemplated the union of all of the New Hampshire grants 
on both sides of the River and east of the Green Mountains, 
in the state of New Connecticut, with the seat of govern- 
ment at the college seat in Hanover or its neighborhood. 
The Bennington party's scheme comprised the establish- 
ment of the grants west of the River and on either side of 
the moimtains, as an independent district. The Bennington 
party were animated primarily by the hostility to New 
York growing out of the bitter contest over the Wentworth 
charters, coupled with their aversion to the still existing 
system of centralization in that state, abhorrent to their 
democratic spirit. The College party reached then- idea of 
a new state " through a calm and unimpassioned process 
of reasoning, in which apparently expediency played a 
leading part," as John L. Rice tersely puts it in his bro- 
chure on the movement. It was the contest so familiar in 

2.:.8 




Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779), 

Founder of Dartmouth College. 

From an old painting. 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 259 

our day between the practiced politicians and the " literary 
fellows," with the customary result. Although mighty 
with the pen, the " men of thought were no match for the 
men of action," as the event proved. Nevertheless they 
maintained a skillful warfare, produced some exceedingly 
able papers, and kept affairs astir in the Upper Valley for 
more than six years. They created a schism on both sides 
of the River, which baffled the other party, and moved 
bluff Ethan Allen to arraign them with more vigor than 
regard for the rules of orthography as " a Petulent, Pette- 
foging, Scribling sort of Gentry that will keep any govern- 
ment in hot water till they are thoroughly brought under 
the Exertions of Authority." 

The germ of the College party was in Eleazer Whee- 
lock's final selection of the Upper Valley for the location 
of Dartmouth College, evolved from his " Moor Indian 
Charity School," begun fifteen years before (1754) upon its 
charter by the crown in 1769. On the grants then occu- 
pied in the region there were among the few settlers a num- 
ber of men of means and culture, several of them graduates 
of Yale and Harvard, who were zealous in public matters, 
and had been directly instrumental in leading Wheelock 
here. With or soon following him came more of similar 
stamp, and these united with the others in making the 
college almost immediately a centre of poHtical influence. 

Between most of these new settlements there was a 
strong community of interests, for their settlers had largely 
come from neighboring towns in eastern Connecticut. The 
grantees of four of them — Lebanon, Hanover, Hartford, 
and Norwich, on either side of the River — were townsmen 
of the Connecticut Lebanon, where Wheelock' s Indian 
School originated, and of its neighbors, Windham and 
Mansfield. These four grants were intentionally grouped 



260 Connecticut River 

. together by their proprietors, and their charters were issued 
on the same day — July 4, 1761. They were the first of 
the new crop of Wentworth grants, and the first chartered 
in this part of the Valley. Their names were taken from 
the old Connecticut towns, with the single exception of 
Hanover, which was named for the parish of Hanover, 
then a part of the Connecticut Norwich. Lyme, chartered 
only four days after the first four, and named for old Lyme 
of the lower Valley, was also settled by eastern Connecti- 
cut folk. So were Hartland on the west side, granted two 
days after Lyme, Thetford, west side, granted the following 
August, and Orford, east side, in September. The other 
towns of the group, Cornish and Haverhill on the east side, 
granted respectively in June and May, 1763, and Newbury, 
west side, in August, were settled by Massachusetts stock; 
hence the names of Haverhill and Newbury for the old 
Essex towns of that colony. 

Hanover was the geographical as well as the political 
centre of this group. That section of Hanover in which 
the college was placed was early set apart as the College 
District, and was put under the jurisdiction of President 
Wheelock, who was appointed a civil magistrate for its 
government. It comprised a territory three miles square 
immediately surrounding the college. After a few years 
the town sanctioned its incorporation under the name of 
Dresden, and as such it maintained a separate organization 
for some time. The significance, if any, of the name of 
Dresden does not appear. Here the College party centered 
in College Hall. 

The initial tilt of the Dresden statesmen was against 
the New Hampshire Provincial Congress of 1775-1776, 
meeting at Exeter. The issue turned on the assumed right 
of each incorporated town to representation in that body 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 261 

and in the legislature that succeeded it. The basis of re- 
presentation which the congress had adopted was numerical, 
arrived at approximately by grouping the smaller towns in 
classes and assigning to each class a single representative. 
Thus Grafton County, which included the new settlements 
on the east side of the River, was accorded but six repre- 
sentatives in a body of eighty-nine members. Hanover was 
in a class with five other towns. Designated the chief 
town of its class, Hanover duly received a precept for an 
election to the congress to convene at Exeter in December, 
1775. The selectmen refused to hold a meeting and sent 
the precept back with no return on it. The other classes, 
though dissatisfied, complied with their precepts and sent 
delegates. So the Hanover class was alone of Grafton 
County unrepresented. 

At the session, however, President Wheelock's son 
John, then a young man of twenty-one, four years gradu- 
ated from the college, and already experienced in affairs, 
appeared as the agent of the unrepresented class with a 
petition for a change in the law by which its six towns 
should have for the present two representatives. This 
petition was urged especially on the ground that a proper 
representation was most necessary in " this unsettled, crit- 
ical, and interesting day." But the congress accorded it 
scant consideration, even treating it with " something like 
contempt." Naturally the dissatisfaction increased, and 
when in due course a second precept was received it was 
ignored more pointedly than the first one. The issue was 
brought to a crisis by the act of the last congress, that of 
January, 1776, perpetuating the objectionable basis of re- 
presentation in the frame of government, or " temporary 
constitution," adopted prior to the transformation of the 
body into a Council and House of Representatives. 



262 Connecticut River 

At once the College party asserted themselves. In April 
circular letters were sent out from " Dresden " to the com- 
mittees of safety of various towns, calling them together 
for conference and action. On the thirty-first of July a 
convention of them from eleven towns assembled at Dresden 
to take up the matters of grievance. They comprised repre- 
sentatives of the six towns in the Hanover class and of the 
east side River towns northward, — Lyme, Orford, Haver- 
hill and Bath. The result of their deliberations was practi- 
cally a declaration of independence of the Exeter government. 

No record of this assembly remains beyond the printed 
Address "to the people of the several towns throughout 
the Colony." The College Hall in which the proceedings 
were held was the rude structure built up from Eleazer 
Wheelock's first one-story dwelling, and used in part for 
commons, and in part jointly by the college and the towns- 
people for chapel, meetinghouse and public hall. It is only 
conjectured who constituted the leading factors. Presum- 
ably chief among them were Bezaleel Woodward, Eleazer 
Wheelock's brother-in-law, at the time a tutor in the col- 
lege, afterward the professor of mathematics, and Colonel 
Elisha Payne of Cardigan (now Orange, east of Lebanon), 
a trustee of the college, just appointed by the Exeter gov- 
ernment a judge of the New Hampshire court of appeals, 
at a later period chief-justice of Vermont. Probably among 
the dignitaries occupying the platform, that rostrum " of 
bass-wood planks hewn with an axe " from which great 
thoughts were uttered in the brave youth of Dartmouth, 
was Eleazer Wheelock. And doubtless young John Whee- 
lock was an active participant. Woodward is generally 
assumed to have been the author of the Addi'ess ; though 
Rice intimates that the hands of both Woodward and Payne 
were in its composition. 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 263 

It was indeed a remarkable document coming out of the 
wilderness. Disregarding what had been done at Exeter, 
it opened with the bold declaration that " the important 
crisis is now commenced wherein the providence of God, 
the Grand Continental Congress, and our necessitous cir- 
cumstances call upon us to assume oiu- natm-al right of 
laying a foundation of civil government within and for 
this Colony." The Exeter scheme of representation was 
skilfully discussed with this virile conclusion : 

" Our assertion holds good : (viz.) That no person or body corpo- 
rate can be deprived of any natural or acquired right without forfeit- 
ure or voluntary surrender, neither of which can be pretended in this 
case : Therefore they who espouse the argument are necessarily 
driven to adopt this principle : (viz.) That one part of the Colony 
hath a right to curtail or deprive the other part of their natural and 
acquired rights and privileges, even the most essential, without their 
consent. . . ." 

Summing up the case it was asserted that since there was 
" no legal power subsisting in the Colony for the purpose 
for which it is now necessary there should be : it is still in 
the hands of the people." Accordingly the people were 
called upon " to exercise the rights and privileges they 
have to erect a supreme legislative court for the Colony 
in order to lay a foundation and plan a government in 
this critical juncture of affairs." As for the issuers of the 
address : 

"we are determined not to spend our blood and treasure in de- 
fending against the chains and fetters that are forged and prepared 
for U8 abroad, in order to purchase some of the like kind of our own 
manufacturing ; but mean to hold them alike detestable." 

Towns concurring in the sentiments of the Address 
were asked to commimicate with Bezaleel Woodward, as 
" clerk of the United-Committees." How generally they 



264 Connecticut River 

responded is indicated by a letter of President Meshech 
Weare of the Council of New Hampshire to the state's 
delegates in the Continental Congress. Writing from Exe- 
ter under date of December 16, 1776, he refers to the Ad- 
dress " fabricated, I suppose, at Dartmouth College," as 
having had, " with the assiduity of the College Gentlemen," 
such an effect " that almost the whole county of Grafton, 
if not the whole, have refused to send members to the new 
Assembly which is to meet next Wednesday." 

Meanwhile the Bennington party on the west side of 
the River and west of the Green Mountains had been an- 
tagonizing New York and were now pushing then scheme 
of an independent state. 

In January, 1775, several towns west of the mountains 
had organized in opposition to New York at a convention 
held in Manchester, twenty-five miles north of Bennington. 
Three months after, in April, the committees of safety of 
towns east of the mountains convened at Westminster on 
the River and took similar and more definite action. The 
latter body voted a petition to the king " to be taken out 
of so offensive a jm-isdiction and either annexed to some 
other government or erected and incorporated into a new 
one." The towns represented in this convention were all 
of Cumberland county, one of two counties into which New 
York had divided her claimed territory between the moun- 
tains and the River ; Cumberland embracing the country 
south of a line touching the River above Windsor, the other 
county, Gloucester, taking in the towns north of that line. 

The affair at Lexington and the Concord Fight eight 
days after the Westminster convention " rendered any pe- 
tition to the king inexpedient," as the chroniclers of the 
time with unconscio*us humor record. No further definite 
move was made till the opening of 1776, when in January, 




John Wheelock (i 754-1817), Son of Eleazar Wheelock, 
Second President of Dartmouth College. 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 265 

a convention of the committees of a majority of the towns 
west of the mountains met at Dorset, the next town north 
of Manchester, and advanced matters a point or two. The 
weightiest act of this body was the preparation of an ad- 
dress to the Continental Congress remonstrating against 
further submission to New York, with a petition that the 
people on the grants be permitted to do duty in the Con- 
tinental service as a district by themselves. In May Con- 
gress offset the petition with a recommendation that the 
protestors remain under New York till the end of the war 
with assurance that their case woidd not be prejudiced by 
such action. 

This rebuff acted as a stimulus rather than a check to 
the leaders. In June all the towns on the grants west of 
the River were called to another Dorset convention for July, 
and this body, assembling only a few days before the meet- 
ing of the College party at Dresden, resolved that "appli- 
cation be made to the inhabitants of said grants to form 
the same into a separate district." Since only one dele- 
gate was present from the east side of the mountains a 
committee was appointed to visit the Cumberland and 
Gloucester county towns and endeavor to secure their co- 
operation. Dm'ing the summer this committee came into 
the Valley and met the various town committees at confer- 
ences at Windsor, Thetford, and Norwich. At the Nor- 
wich conference John Wheelock appeared from Hanover 
and surprised the Dox'set committee with the proposition 
that the east side towns which the College party represented 
be included in the movement. The conference broke up 
without action on the proposition. Nevertheless the wedge 
had been inserted. 

The result of the committee's canvass was the appear- 
ance of ten delegates from the towns between the mountains 



266 Connecticut River 

and the River at the next convention, also held at 
Dorset, in September. But none appeared from the Glouces- 
ter county towns. Accordingly, another adjournment was 
taken to October, to allow for further missionary work. 
In order more effectually to conciliate the Gloucester towns, 
it was arranged that the October sitting should be at West- 
minster on the River. When, however, the day arrived 
the people of the territory were too agitated over war 
preparations, the defeat of the American naval force on 
Lake Champlain, and the apprehended attack on Ticon- 
deroga, to give attention to civic projects. Consequently 
only a few delegates appeared, and, without action on the 
vital question, the body again adjom-ned. 

At the next session, January 15, 1777, held in the 
Westminster Court House, the scheme was finally carried 
through, and the declaration of independence of New York 
was at length proclaimed with the formal setting up of the 
new state. Gloucester county was now represented, and of 
the committee of five named to draft the declaration, two 
were River men — Ebenezer Hoisington of Windsor, and 
Jacob Burton of Norwich. The entne territory of the 
grants on the west side of the River was declared by 
imanimous vote to be " a separate, free, and independent 
jurisdiction or state," and the College party's name of "New 
Connecticut " was chosen for it. 

By this time the College party nad succeeded in detach- 
ing upward of forty New Hampshire towns from the 
Exeter government, and the " United-Committees " were 
industriously disseminating their doctrine. The Exeter 
government had made repeated attempts to allay the spirit 
of discontent, but to no purpose. On the third of January, 
1777, the Assembly named a committee, with President 
Weare at the head, to visit Grafton county and " entreat 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 267 

the people to consider the consequences of such internal 
discords and divisions among ourselves " at this critical 
time. The move was met by a new circular letter emanat- 
ing from the United-Committees, presenting a plan of 
campaign to the freeholders. " We proceed to observe," 
ran this spirited document, " that the declaration of inde- 
pendency [by the American colonies] made the antecedent 
form of government of necessity null and void ; and by 
that act the people of the different Colonies slid back into 
a state of nature, and in that condition they were to begin 
anew." Therefore the freeholders and inhabitants were 
enjoined to adhere to these two important points : 

" (1) That you give not up an ace of the right that the smallest 
town has to a distinct representation if incorporated. 

" (2) That as the present Assembly is unconstitutional, being the 
same virtually as before the declaration of independency, they do 
dissolve themselves, after having notified each corporate town to 
form a new body that may fix on a plan of government which can 
be the only proper seal of your concurrence in independency. Thus 
you will act a consistent part, and secure your palace from being pil- 
fered within while you are filling up the breaches that are made 
without." 

The local committees met President Weare and his com- 
mittee at Ordway's tavern in Lebanon, on the thirteenth 
of February. It was a notable assembly with twelve towns 
represented, and Eleazer Wheelock present as a spectator. 
But the discussion was fruitless. The very next day the 
United-Committees met and the plan of union with " New 
Connecticut" was advanced. Still the scheme was pru- 
dently kept in abeyance till after the adoption of the plan 
of government for the new state. 

On June 4, the Westminster convention reassembled 
by adjournment in the Upper Valley, at Windsor, with an 



268 Connecticut River 

increased representation from the River towns, and made 
provision for a constitution for the new state. The drafting 
of the instrument was assigned to a committee instructed 
to I'eport at a " constitutional convention " composed of 
newly elected delegates, to meet also at Windsor, on the 
second of July. At the June meeting another act, en- 
gineered through by the Bennington party, was of greater 
significance in the game between the parties. This was 
the substitution of Vermont for New Connecticut as the 
name of the new state. The reason given for dropping 
the name of New Connecticut was its previous application 
to a district on the Susquehanna River, and the incon- 
veniences that might arise from " two separate districts 
on this continent " bearing the same name. The real 
motive was evidently the desire of the Bennington party 
now to rid themselves of the symbol of a union with the 
College party's venture and consequent conflict with New 
Hampshire. 

However, undismayed by this check, the Dresden states- 
men moved onward with their plans. A week after the 
June Windsor convention the United-Committees met at the 
house of Captain Aaron Storrs in Hanover and adopted an 
Address to the Exeter Assembly embodying their ultimatum . 
The disaffected towns were willing to unite with New 
Hampshire on these principles only : liberty to the inhabit- 
ants of every town to elect at least one representative ; the 
fixing of the seat of government as near the center of the 
state as conveniently might be ; and the submission of 
the matter of further establishing a permanent plan of 
government to an Assembly " convened as aforesaid, and 
for that purpose only." A committee was appointed to 
present the Address at Exeter, but the pressure of war 
affairs prevented their doing so at this time. 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 269 

The new Vermont " constitutional convention," called 
for July 2, assembled at Windsor on that date in the heat 
of Burgoyne's advance, several of the delegates coming 
direct from service with the militia in the field The busi- 
ness, therefore, was of necessity hru-riedly despatched, yet 
with no lack of formality and deliberation. The attendance 
was small but influential. Many of the delegates had been 
members of the June convention. The proceedings began 
in the meeting-house, where that convention had sat, but 
a removal was soon made to the village tavern. Here all 
the important acts of the little body were performed, and 
in commemoration of them and of subsequent sittings of 
the General Assembly in its "large room," the building 
came to be called " Constitution Hall." It yet stands, or 
a remnant of it — off the street leading up from the present 
railroad station — but long ago shorn of its glory and re- 
duced to humble service as a wheelwright's shop. 

The story of this convention, which so fairly launched 
Vermont "amidst the tumults of war," is one of the most 
animated of the many romances of the beautiful Valley. 

Before opening their business the delegates gathered in 
the meeting-house and listened to a " convention sermon." 
The preacher was the Rev. Aaron Hutchinson of Pomfret, 
adjoining the Vermont Hartford on the River, a man of 
vmique distinction in the community. He was a classical 
scholar of high rank, a preparer of youth for college, and 
it was his custom to teach Latin and Greek while at work 
in the fields, his pupils being required to follow him as he 
followed the plow. With other remarkable talents he pos- 
sessed a prodigious memory. It was said of him that he 
" often went through the whole pulpit service without 
opening a book of any kind, appointing and reciting the 
hymns, as well as quoting the scriptures,with entire reliance 



270 Connecticut River 

on his memory, and without mistake." The theme of 
his convention sermon was " A well-tempered self-love a 
rule of conduct toward others." It was delivered extem- 
poraneously, after a horseback ride from his distant home 
on the hot July morning. It was afterward put into type, 
and a copy of it is treasured by the Vermont Historical 
Society. Following the sermon came a prayer. Then a 
Watts hymn, " The Universal Law of Equity," was sung ; 
and then the assembly arose and all blended their stalwart 
voices in the Doxology. 

The proceedings in the tavern hall had barely started 
when an " express " broke in upon them with an alarming 
message from Colonel Seth Warner at Rutland. It an- 
noimced the advance of Burgoyne upon Ticonderoga and 
called for assistance. " I am at this moment," the despatch 
woimd up, " a going to mount my horse in company with 
Colonel Bellows for Ticonderoga." The business in hand 
was instantly dropped and measures put in operation for hiu:- 
rying forward men and provisions to the beleaguered post. 
Orders went out to start on the march what remained of 
the militia not already with the officer commanding the 
Continental Army there. A fresh express was hastened off 
to Exeter with a copy of Warner's message to the New 
Hampshu'e Assembly, then also in session, and a letter 
from the convention detailing what they were doing in the 
emergency, with the suggestive observation that " every 
prudent step ought to be taken for the relief of our friends " 
at the front. 

These exciting matters disposed of, the regular business 
was resumed by the members with fine composm'e. The 
draft of the constitution was taken up and considered para- 
graph by paragraph through nearly fovir days' sittings, or 
till the eighth of July. Then came another and more 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 271 

startling interruption which threw the body into confusion. 
An express direct from the field clattered up to the tavern, 
bringing a message from General St. Clan which announced 
the fateful events of the evacuation of Ticonderoga on the 
morning of the sixth, the British pursuit of the retreating 
Americans, and the attack on the morning of the seventh 
upon Warner at Hubbardton, the disastrous result-of which 
was not known at the time of writing. 

In the line of the triumphant enemy's march were the 
homes of many of the members, and the first impulse, 
strong especially in the delegates from the western towns, 
was immediately to adjourn and fly to the common defence. 
As they were debating, suddenly there broke upon the town 
a furious thunderstorm which compelled all to keep the 
tavern's shelter for a time. While they waited they con- 
tinued their work, and the interval was sufficient to enable 
them properly and fully to complete it. The constitution 
as finally fixed was rapidly read and adopted unanimously ; 
an election was ordered for December when representatives 
should be chosen to the first General Assembly, which was 
appointed to meet at Bennington in January ; a committee 
was named to procure a supply of arms for the new state ; 
and a Council of Safety was instituted to administer its 
affans till the state should be duly organized. Then in the 
clearing of the storm the delegates, their civic work done, 
immediately scattered for the work of war. 

The constitution was modelled after that of Pennsyl- 
vania, Benjamin Franklin's work, and was a pretty close 
copy. But the delegates added to the first section of the 
declaration of rights that clause, all their own, which gave 
Vermont the distinction of being the first of the American 
states to abohsh slavery by constitutional act. Thus to the 
Connecticut Valley is to be credited another great step in 
democracy. 



272 Connecticut River 

The College party, after the issue of their " ultimatum " 
in June, remained inactive during the rest of this troublous 
summer of 1777. But in October, at a meeting in John 
Payne's tavern at Hanover, they appointed a new committee 
to lay that document before the Assembly then in session 
at Exeter. In November the Assembly made reply. The 
existing government and representation, it was agreed, 
were "far from perfect," but would answer for "the present 
purposes of our grand concern " — the war ; the Assembly 
were in " full sentiment " that so soon as the circumstances 
of the war would admit, a free and equal representation of 
the people should convene and form a permanent system. 
Though conciliatory, this failed to satisfy. At the next 
session, which began in Decemljer, the Assembly took an- 
other tack. It was now proposed that the towns should, 
if they saw fit, at the next ensuing election instruct their 
representatives to call a constitutional convention, to be 
chosen by a full and free vote, at once to frame a permanent 
form of government. 

These concessions were more effective, and perceptibly 
weakened the College statesmen's hold on their constituents. 
In this emergency they again resorted to the printing press. 
Their issue at this time, bearing date of January 6, 1778, 
was the now rare pamphlet entitled, " Observations on the 
Right of Jurisdiction claimed by the States of New York 
and New Hampshii-e over the New Hampshire Grants (so 
called) lying on both sides of Connecticut-River : In a Letter 
addressed to the Inhabitants of said Grants." The essay 
presented a concise historical statement of the origin of the 
jiu-isdiction, with a masterly argument in support of the 
right and the " expediency " of the grants on both sides of 
the River to imite under one government. It was so skill- 
fully framed as to apply either to a union of the east side 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 273 

towns with the new Vermont, or to an independent con- 
lederation of east and west side towns whose centre and 
capital should be " Dresden." So the way was cleared for 
action. 

Now followed a series of bold moves and counter-moves 
which kept the community on both sides of the River m a 
lively state of commotion for a considerable time. 

The Vermont constitutional convention reassembled 
agam at Windsor m a brief session on December 24 and 
on account of the war troubles postponed the election called 
for that date to the first of March, 1778, and advanced the 
dayot meeting of the first Assembly to the twelfth of March 
The place of meeting was also changed from Bennington 
to Windsor, perhaps through the influence of the College 
men A month before the day appomted for the coming 
m of this Assembly the United-Committees met in Cornish 
at Moses Chase's house, and evidently considered the de^ 
tails of a scheme of union with the new state of all the 
^ew Hampshire towns between the River and the Ime of 
the Mason Grant, twenty miles east of it. To the eleven 
towns originally constituting the United-Committees' con- 
stituency five had been added, three of them River towns 
— Cornish, Piermont, and Lyman. 

When on March 12 the new Assembly convened the 
United-Committees were in session conveniently across 
the River at Cornish, primed for action. Promptly upon the 
organization of the state in Windsor's " Constitution Hall " 
with the election of officers, they sent over a delegation 
bearmg a petition for the admission of their sixteen east 
side towns, and all others on the grants east of the River 
that might be desirous of such union ; with the allegation 
that the sixteen were ''not connected with any state 
with respect to their internal police." The proposition was 



274 Connecticut River 

received with marked disfavor by the Bennington party, 
and they brought about its rejection a day or two after by 
a decisive vote. But at this the representatives from most 
of the west side River towns threatened to withdraw and 
unite with the east^siders in forming a new state. There- 
upon the adverse vote was rescinded, and the Assembly 
finally referred the decision of the question to the people. 

The popular vote was taken by towns after the adjourn- 
ment of the Assembly, and reported at the next session, 
which met at Bennington the following June. Forty-seven 
towns made retm-ns. Thirty-live favored the union, twelve 
opposed it. The Bennington party protested that the towns 
had voted under a misapprehension, and charged the Col- 
lege party with having wilfully spread the impression that 
New Hampshire was indifferent to the movement. The 
Benningtonians were also at a disadvantage, since the 
larger part of the towns west of the mountains had been 
abandoned at the time of Burgoyne's advance and were not 
yet in condition to vote. The ojiposition, however, accepted 
the situation, and on June 11 the sixteen east side towns 
were formally admitted into the Vermont fold. Notifica- 
tion was also made to the contiguous towns that they 
would be similarly received upon a vote of the major pari, 
of their inhabitants in favor of union. 

The College party now began to exercise a directing 
hand in the further shaping of the state. On June 15 
Dartmouth College was taken under the patronage of Ver- 
mont. President Eleazer Wheelock was commissioned a 
justice of the peace, and Bezaleel Woodward was appointed 
one of the judges of the superior court '' for the banishment 
of tories &c." With the College statesmen's plans at last 
apparently prospering, this session adjourned, the next 
Assembly to meet again at Windsor, in October. 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 275 

During the interval between these sittings, however, 
moves were made by the opposition which were to turn 
the game. 

Shortly after the adjournment of the Bennington ses- 
sion the United-Committees met in Orford, at the house of 
Colonel Morey, and prepared a series of instructions for the 
conduct of the east side towns that had accepted the union 
with Vermont. They were to obey all military orders 
emanating from Vermont, but were to cooperate with the 
New Hampshire militia in all matters pertaining to the 
common defence. A letter was also despatched to Presi- 
dent Weare announcing the separation of these towns from 
New Hampshire ; and, with a suavity imder the circum- 
stances sublime, expressing the hope that an '' amicable 
settlement may be come into at a proper time between the 
State of New Hampshire and those towns on the grants 
that unite with the State of Vermont relative to all civil 
and military affairs transacted in connection with the State 
of New Hampshire since the commencement of the present 
war to the time of the union, so that amity and friendship 
may subsist and continue between the two states." But 
the studied courtesy of this corumunication instead of soft- 
ening incensed the Exeter party, and their batteries were 
turned hotly beyond the College party against the new 
state. 

The hostilities warmed up with the sending in August 
of two stirring letters from President Weare, one to the 
New Hampshire delegates in the Continental Congress, 
the other to Governor Chittenden. In the letter to the 
delegates he told caustically of the action of the " pretended 
State of Vermont " in extending " their pretended jurisdic- 
tion" over the Connecticut and "taking into union, as 
they phrase it," the towns belonging to New Hampshire ; 



276 Connecticut River 

and he lu-ged the delegates to endeavor to induce Congress 
to interfere, otherwise the sword might have to decide the 
matter. To Governor Chittenden, whom he addressed not 
in that gentleman's " magistratical style," since Vermont 
had not heen admitted into the confederacy of the United 
States, he represented the assumption that the sixteen towns 
were not connected with any state in respect to their in- 
ternal police, to be "an idle phantom, a mere chimera." 
The " town of Boston in Massachusetts, or Hartford in 
Connecticut," he indignantly declared, " might as naturally 
evince their being unconnected with their respective states 
as these sixteen towns their not being connected with New 
Hampshu'e." He besought Mr. Chittenden to exert his 
influence to undo the work. 

Upon the receipt of this letter the Vermont governor 
convoked the council, and at the instance of the Bennington 
party, Ethan Allen was despatched upon a semi-official 
mission to Philadelphia to " ascertain in what light the 
proceedings of Vermont were viewed by Congress." Allen 
arriving in Philadelphia in September, found the delegates 
from New Hampshire and New York combined in a common 
effort to crush the new state. He succeeded in winning over 
the New Hampshire delegates by entering into a compact 
with them, under which he stipulated to use his influence 
to dissolve the union with the towns east of the Connecticut, 
they agreeing, if this were done, to break with New York 
and assist Vermont in procuring the recognition of Con- 
gress. Then he hastened back to plan for carrying out 
his part of the bargain as speedily as possible. 

When the Assembly convened in Windsor for the Oc- 
tober session, representatives from ten of the sixteen east 
side towns appeared and took their seats. The College 
party were sufficiently strong to elect Bezaleel Woodward, 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 277 

who sat for Dresden, as clerk of the House. On the se- 
cond day Ethan Allen's report was put in. It was em- 
phatic in the expression of his conviction, from what he 
had heard of the disapprobation of the union with "sundry 
towns east of the River Connecticut," that unless the state 
immediately receded from such union, " the whole power 
of the confederacy of the United States of America " would 
join to annihilate Vermont. Congress, he confidently as- 
serted, was ready to concede her independence provided no 
claim was made to jvu-isdiction east of the River. 

With this report President Weare's August letter to 
Governor Chittenden was taken up and the union was 
under consideration in committee of the whole, joined by 
the governor and council, for nearly a fortnight. The 
Bennington party bent their energies to break it, while the 
College party ably sustained it. Of a committee appointed 
to outline a plan to " lay the foundation " for an answer to 
President Weare, the College party had the majority. 
They carried through a report announcing the Assembly's 
determination " in every prudent and lawful way to main- 
tain and support entire the state as it now stands " ; and 
coolly proposing to the Exeter government a plan for estab- 
lishing the Mason line as the boundary line between New 
Hampshire and Vermont. The report made provision 
for the drafting by a sub-committee, which they named, of 
a " Declaration," setting forth the political state of the 
grants on both sides of the River from the time of their 
original issue. 

To this point the Bennington party had been outma- 
noeuvred by the College statesmen. But the day after the 
adoption of the report (October 21) the Benningtonians 
succeeded in executing a flank movement which brought 
affairs to a crisis with the advantage on their side. This 



278 Connecticut River 

movement was the defeat of the College party's measure 
for erecting the east side towns into a county by them- 
selves, or annexing them to one of the west side counties. 
Thus these towns were summarily deprived of the exercise 
of any jurisdictional power, and denied the same " privileges 
and immunities " enjoyed by the other towns of the state, 
as guaranteed them by the act of union. Thereupon their 
representatives bolted. Entering a formal protest against 
the proceeding on the ground that it violated the Vermont 
constitution and " totally destroyed the confederation of 
the state," they all walked out from tlie Assembly. And 
with them went the representatives of ten border towns on 
the west side, two members of the coimcil, and the deputy 
or lieutenant governor, Colonel Joseph Marsh of the Ver- 
mont Hartford. So the Assembly was left with barely a 
quorum, but the Bennington party in full control. 

The Bennington party artfully interpreted the protest 
and withdrawal as virtually a dissolution of the union, thus 
accomplishing their object. The next day, October 2.3, 
was devoted to much writing of messages to outside author- 
ities. Governor Chittenden and Ethan Allen prepared let- 
ters to President Weare, while the " Protesting Members," 
as the bolters designated themselves, drew up a presenta- 
tion of their side to the president of Congress. Governor 
Chittenden's letter represented the Assembly's vote on the 
county matter as actually a resolve that " no additional 
exercise of jurisdictional authority be had by the state east 
of Connecticut River for the time being." Colonel Allen 
wrote more spiritedly. The union, brought about " inad- 
vertently by influence of designing men," was in his opinion 
now entirely dissolved, and he hoped the New Hampshire 
government would excuse the " imbecility " of Vermont 
in entering into it. He had punctually discharged his 



Dartmouth College and New Connecticut 279 

obligation with the delegates in Congress for its demolition. 
Now he looked to New Hampshire to complete the bargain 
by acceding to the independence of Vermont, " as the late 
obstacles are honorably removed." Both of these letters 
were despatched to Exeter by Ira Allen, Ethan's able and 
more diplomatic younger brother, well up to the measiu-e 
of a great statesman. The letter of the " Protesting Mem- 
bers" to President Laurens was intended mainly to fore- 
stall possible acknowledgment of Vermont with her eastern 
boundary at the River. It was forwarded by John Whee- 
lock, now made Colonel, for service in the war, and virtually 
accredited by the protestants as their agent to Congress. 

On the twenty-fourth the few representatives left in the 
Assembly finished up the remaining business, and after 
making provision for ascertaining the sense of the people 
upon the subject of the union, adjourned to meet next at 
Bennington in February (1779). On the same day the 
Protesting Members, now organized after the manner of 
the United-Committees, were planning to assemble a con- 
vention at Cornish on the ninth of December (1778) of 
delegates from all the towns on the Grants. 

A brave move was now to be made by the scholars in 
politics. The purpose of this convention was practically 
to take measures for the formation of a new state of the 
towns on both sides of the River, and to supplant Vermont. 



XX 

The Play for a State 

The College Party's Strategic Moves — New Hampshire extending Jurisdiction 
over Vermont's Territory — Clashes in "West Side River Towns between 
Vermont Officers and " Yorkers" • — Ethan Allen and his " Green Moun- 
tain Boys " on the Scene — A Trial in Westminster Court-House — Con- 
gress and the Contesting Interests — New Combinations in the Valley — 
Ira Allen's clever Capture of a Convention — East -side Towns again united 
with Vermont — Disturbances in River border Towns — Final Move of the 
Benningtonians — Passing of the College Party. 

TO prepare the way for their Cornish convention of 
December, 1778, and the supplanting of Vermont by 
a new state in the Valley, the College statesmen issued a 
new address, the most elaborate of all their essays. This 
was the famous state paper, " A Public Defence of the 
Rights of the New Hampshire Grants (so called) on Both 
Sides of Connecticut-River to Associate Together and form 
themselves into an Independent State." It was deliber- 
ately put forth as the " Declaration " called for in the re- 
port adopted by the October Vermont Assembly before the 
bolt of the " Protesting Members," and purported to be the 
work of the " major part of the committee appointed for 
that pm-pose." The " major part " comprised the bolting 
College party leaders. 

Questionable as the manner of putting it forth may 
have been, it was a document ranking with the ablest state 
papers of the period, and it has become of distinct historical 
value. 

It discussed with lucidness the fundamental principles 

280 



The Play for a State 281 

of free government which the republican statesmen of that 
day were advancing in the colonies. It marked sharply 
the distinction between the charter governments of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut and the government of New 
Hampshire by royal commission, upon which distinction 
from the beginning the College men had grounded the right 
of the grants to stand out from New Hampshire when the 
king's authority was thrown off. Unlike Massachusetts 
and Connecticut, whose people were " held together and 
united by Grants and Charters from the king conferring 
both landed property and jurisdiction, which the king 
could not constitutionally alter," New Hampshire, outside 
the Mason Grant, " never owned an inch of land or farth- 
ing of property. Neither could they even as much as grant 
a town incorporation ; nor had they right or voice in the 
matter. In short, they never were a body politic in any 
legal sense whatever ; nor anything more than a number 
of people subjected to the obedience of the king's servant 
(the governor) in such way as his commission prescribed." 
With the Declaration of Independence the royal commis- 
sion became "a mere nullity." When the power of the 
king was rejected and ceased to operate, — 

" the people made a stand at their first legal stage, viz., their town 
incorporations, which they received from the king as little Grants or 
Charters of privileges by which they were united in little incorpor- 
ated bodies with certain powers and privileges which were not held 
at the pleasure of the king (as those commissions were) but were 
perpetual. These the people by universal consent held sacred ; and 
so long as they hold these grants so long do they hold themselves 
subjects of government according to them ; and as such must and 
do they act, and transact all heir political affairs. Hence it is that 
the major part of one of those towns have a right to control the 
minor part. . . . Consequently they will remain so many distinct 
corporations until they agree to unite in one aggregate body ... as 



282 Connecticut River 

much as the thirteen United States were before they entered into a 
confederacy." 

Thus President Weare's assertion tliat the seceding sixteen 
towns could no more claim to be vinconnected with any 
state than could Boston in Massachusetts or Hartford in 
Connecticut, was met and answered. Other arguments of 
the Exeter government were as successfully controverted, 
and the Defence concluded with these alternative proposi- 
tions to New Hampshire : to unite all the New Hampshire 
Grants in one state by themselves, or to annex the whole 
to New Hampshire. The adoption of either would be likely 
to bring the seat of government to the Valley and the 
College neighborhood and thus realize the desires of the 
College party. 

When the Cornish convention assembled at Samuel 
Chase's house on the appointed day, it appeared that twen- 
ty-two towns were represented. Eight of these were towns 
west of the River. All were the most populous and influ- 
ential in their respective counties. The only record of the 
proceedings is a series of resolves as adopted, printed at the 
back of the pamphlet containing the " Public Defence. " 
These resolves, however, sufficiently indicate the radical 
nature of the action taken. They approved the " Public 
Defence " and adopted its principles. They rejected the 
line of the River, arbitrarily fixed by the king in 1764, as 
a boundary between separate jurisdictions. They assumed 
that the Vermont Assembly's act of October 21 on the 
county matter effectually destroyed the Windsor consti- 
tution, and involved the dissolution of the Vermont con- 
federation of towns. They provided that the to^vns not 
represented in the convention be requested to join the body 
in proposals to New Hampshire for the settlement of the 



The Play for a State 283 

boundary line between that state and the grants at or near 
the Mason line. Should the Vermont towns not agree to 
this, then efforts would be made to induce New Hampshire 
to claim jurisdiction over the entu-e grants provided a plan 
of government was adopted agreeable to the views of the 
people on them. Meanwhile, the resolves significantly 
closed, till one or the other of these proposals should be 
accepted, the " United Towns," as the combination was 
now styled, would " trust in Providence and defend them- 
selves." 

The Bennington party moved energetically to thwart 
these schemes. Ira Allen, who, as he wrote, " providen- 
tially happened" at the Cornish convention, immediately 
sent an accovmt of it to President Weare in a letter from 
Windsor, with his assurance that the incoming Assembly 
of Vermont would not countenance an encroachment on the 
State of New Hampshire, and the intimation that any at- 
tempt on New Hampshire's part to extend her " ancient 
jurisdiction " west of the River would be resisted. He had 
already issued from Dresden, the heart of the College 
party, an addi-ess to the west side people recounting the 
reasons which shoidd determine them to adhere to the 
Vermont government as then constituted. The Dresden 
leaders of the "United Towns" as sedulously pursued then- 
cause, exerting their best endeavors to bring the same west 
side towns to their propositions. 

The Benniugtonians, however, easily won, and when 
the General Assembly came in at Bennington, February 
11, 1779, a clear majority of the representatives were found 
to be instructed to vote for recession from the union with 
the sixteen east side towns. Accordingly the matter was 
taken up with the first business, and on the second day 
a committee had reported and the Assembly had voted 



284 Connecticut River 

formally to dissolve " said union " and make it " totally 
void, null and extinct." 

With this action the committee of the Cornish conven- 
tion were driven to the alternative of inducing New Hamp- 
shire to assert her old jurisdiction over all the grants as 
before the royal decree of 1764, and so wipe out Vermont. 
This proposition was immediately pushed, notwithstanding 
its conflict with the theory, all along so stoutly maintained, 
in justification of the secession of the sixteen towns. In 
March General Bailey and Captain Davenport Phelps at 
Newbury, as a sub-committee, or agents, embodied the pro- 
posal in a skilfully drawn petition to the Exeter govern- 
ment. Later, in March, Ira Allen, appearing at Exeter 
with Governor Chittenden's report of the dissolution of the 
union, found the project making dangerous progress there. 
Strong eif orts were exerted to head it off, but without suc- 
cess. It however entered the House in a mutilated form. 
The committee to whom it had been referred reported that 
the state should lay claim to the jurisdiction of the whole 
of the grants lying westward of the River, but " allowing 
and conceding, nevertheless, that if the honorable Conti- 
nental Congress " should permit them to be a separate state, 
" as now claimed by some of the inhabitants thereof by the 
name of Vermont," New Hampshire would acquiesce 
therein. Meanwhile, imtil the dispute were settled by 
Congress, New Hampshire should exercise jm-isdiction only 
so far as the western bank of the River. Action on this 
report was prudently reserved till [the following session 
in Jime, and the Cornish committee were requested to col- 
lect in the interim the sentiments of the people west of the 
River in town- votes on their proposition. Accordingly the 
Cornish committee proceeded industriously to canvass the 
Vermont towns through handbills and circular letters sent 
out from Dresden. 



The Play for a State 285 

These moves naturally incensed the Bennington party 
and they were put to their mettle to offset them. At the 
same time other perils which threatened Vermont's exist- 
ence engaged the Benningtonians. Massachusetts had now 
joined Vermont's opponents with a claim to a part of her 
territory. In April and May lively events on the River 
border of Cumbei-land County added a new impulse to the 
controversy ■with New York. 

In this quarter a strong minority party, in which were 
included some of the foremost men of means and influence 
in the towns, had steadfastly resisted the authority of Ver- 
mont, remaining loyal to New York. They had formed 
their own committees of safety and in the spring of this 
year (1779) a militia company had been organized among 
them with officers commissioned by Governor Clinton of 
New York. When, in April, the Vermont board of war 
directed a levy of men for service in guarding the frontier, 
certain of these townsmen, known to be active friends of 
New York, refused their quota. Clashes followed between 
the recruiting officers and these " Yorkers." An act in 
Putney especially incensed the " Yorkers." A Vermont 
sergeant there levied upon some cows belonging to delin- 
quents and posted them for sale. Before the appointed day 
a rescue was affected by a band of a hundred men under a 
New York commissioned colonel. On the fom*th of May 
representatives of the malcontents met in convention at 
Brattleborough to confer on the situation. Among other 
acts an appeal was forwarded to Governor Clinton for pro- 
tection in their persons and properties from the repeated 
assaults of the Vermont partisans. In the meantime the 
Vermont government had acted aggressively in directing 
Ethan Allen to march into the county to assist the sheriff 
in the execution of his orders. 



286 Connecticut River 

Promptly the doughty warrior appeared on the scene 
with his " Green Mountain Boys." Forty or more of the 
"Yorkers" against whom warrants, signed by Ira Allen, 
had been issued, charging " enemical conduct" in opposing 
the authority of Vermont, were arrested and taken to West- 
minster, where they were closely packed into the rough 
little jail. Among them were the militia officers in Brattle- 
borough, Putney, and Westminster, from colonel to cap- 
tains, who had received their commissions from New York. 
Their trial took place in the Westminster Court House, — 
tavern, jail, and court-house combined, — the same that was 
the scene of the first outbreak of an organized body of 
"liberty men" more than a month before Lexington and 
Concord ; and where the declaration of independence of the 
grants was first proclaimed : the site of which, on the old 
King's Highway in this pastoral town, overlooking the 
limpid River, is now marked by an inscribed bowlder. 
Ethan Allen's impetuous attempt to stampede the court 
was an enlivening incident of this affair. The prisoners 
were finally condemned as rioters and fined in various sums. 

Governor Clinton replied to the Brattleborough peti- 
tioners with good assurances, and the recommendation that 
the authority of Vermont should in no instance be ac- 
knowledged " except in the alternative of submission or 
inevitable ruin." At the same time he wrote to the presi- 
dent of Congress, now John Jay, announcing that matters 
on the grants were fast approaching a serious crisis which 
" nothing but the interposition of Congress could probably 
prevent." Congress acted so far as to appoint a committee 
to visit the grants and endeavor to promote an amical^le 
settlement of all differences. Only two of this committee, 
however, made the visit, — the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon 
of New Jersey, president of Princeton, and Samuel J. Atlee, 



The Play for a State 287 

oi Pennsylvania, — and their several conferences at Ben- 
nington were without result. 

Such Avas the situation when the June session of the 
New Hampshire Assembly came in at Exeter, and the meas- 
ure reported in April was finally to be acted upon. Ira 
Allen again appeared for the interests of Vermont, while 
the Cornish committee were represented by Professor Wood- 
ward and Colonel Peter Olcott, Woodward's west side 
neighbor of Norwich. The Cornish men's canvass had been 
imsatisfactory, for only a few of the Vermont towns had 
made returns ; but this failure was attributed to the work 
of ''emissaries" of the Bennuigton party, who, it was 
charged, had intercepted and destroyed many of their cir- 
cular-letters. The April proposition went through, and 
thus formal claim was laid to the whole of Vermont con- 
ditionally. The measure was assumed to be aimed against 
New York and in fact friendly to Vermont, since it left her 
free to achieve her independence with the consent of Con- 
gress. But the Bennington party received it with suspicion 
as calculated sooner or later to vex Vermont, as it so proved, 
while the College party recognized in it virtually a defeat 
of their move. 

Yet these able and persistent statesmen took " heart of 
hope," and were soon again found playing a leading hand. 

In September Congress was moved to another step to- 
ward a settlement of the differences. The three claimants 
— New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts — were 
advised to pass laws expressly authorizing Congress to 
determine the whole case ; and this done, they were invited, 
together with the people on the grants "who claimed to 
be a separate jurisdiction," to send agents to Philadelphia 
for a hearing on a specified date. New York and New 
Hampshire passed the enabling acts, but Massachusetts 



288 Connecticut River 

did not ; while Vermont appointed a committee empowered 
to vindicate her right to independence. 

This was the College party's opportunity for another 
apparently shrewd move. Although the invitation to the 
people on the grants claiming to be a separate jurisdiction 
was intended definitely and only for Vermont, the College 
party cleverly construed it to include themselves. Accord- 
ingly, at a convention held in Dresden in November, they 
deputed Professor Woodward and Colonel Olcott to attend 
the hearing as agents for the " United Towns." They now 
claimed to represent " the greater part of the towns in the 
northern district " of the grants '' on both sides of the Con- 
necticut River and between the heights of land on the two 
sides." At this stage the College party were prepared to 
join with New York in a plan to fix the boundary at the 
Green Mountains. If New Hampshire jjersisted in her 
course they might ultimately realize their hope of a sepa- 
rate state in the ^'^alley. 

On the first of February, 1780. the date appointed for 
the hearing, the several interests were all represented at 
Philadelphia. But the subject was not then moved be- 
cause of a deficiency in the Congressional representation. 
A succession of postponements followed till the latter part 
of September, when at length the constitutional quorum 
were present. While Vermont had steadily denied the 
authority of Congress to adjudicate upon the controversy, 
and had issued her ringing " Appeal to the Candid and 
Impartial World " with its announcement of her determina- 
tion not to surrender her liberties to the arbitrament of 
"any man, or body of men under Heaven," her agents — 
Ira Allen and Stephen Rowe Bradley, of Westminster, the 
author of the Appeal — were conspicuous at the fore. As 
prominent also were Bezaleel Woodward and Peter Olcott 



The Play for a State 289 

for the College party. Luke Knowlton of Newfane, west 
of Putney on the River, bearing credentials from Governor 
Clinton, was active for the Cumberland Coimty party loyal 
to New York, with instructions to su23port all the claims 
of New York. Although Messrs. Woodward and Olcott 
were not accorded full official recognition, Congress per- 
mitted them to present a written argument against any 
division of the grants with separate jurisdictions by the 
line of the River. 

The hearing continued through a week and then came 
to an abrupt end with indefinite postponement of further 
consideration of the subject. On the last day the Vermont 
agents, having " perceived that in attempting to decide 
upon the controversy between New York and New Hamp- 
shire, Congress was adjudicating upon the very existence 
of Vermont without condescending to consider her as a 
party, assuming that she did not in any sense possess the 
attributes of sovereignty," withdrew and filed a written 
remonstance. They could no longer " sit as idle specta- 
tors " and witness the efforts to " intrigue and baffle a 
brave and meritorious people out of then- rights and liber- 
ties." After their withdrawal, General Sullivan, New 
Hampshire's agent, " proceeded to state evidence tending 
to prove " that the grants were all within that state, and 
that '' therefore the people inhabiting them had no right 
to a separate and independent jurisdiction." The sudden 
termination of the hearing at this point was found to be dvie 
mainly to a disagreement in the New Hampshire delega- 
tion over their instructions from the Exeter government 
upon which General Sullivan had proceeded. Sullivan 
himself was really in accord with Colonel Olcott, and ap- 
parently with Luke Knowlton, on the plan for fixing the 
boimdary at the Green Mountains. 



290 Connecticut River 

Although this imexpected turn once again disconcerted 
the College men's plans, they received it with complacency, 
and returned to the Valley prepared for new combinations. 
The Benningtonians, angered by the pertinacity exhibited 
by the claiming states, and hopeless of any immediate rec- 
ognition of Vermont, proceeded to develop a policy which 
would convince her opponents of the wisdom of yielding 
'" to power what had so long been denied to the claims of 
justice." So Slade in the Vermont State Pajiers phrases 
it, to indicate, in part, the secret negotiations now under 
way ostensibly to detach Vermont from the United States 
and annex her to the king's dominion in Canada, but 
really to force her recognition by the states ; and, in part, 
the adroit manoeuverings of her astute leaders which 
shortly resulted in the expansion of her jurisdiction into 
the distant territory of the chief claimants. 

So the parties shifted and the situation shaped itself for 
the next move, one of large consequence, in which the su- 
perior skill of the practiced politician over that of the 
literary statesman was demonstrated with dramatic and 
with dazing eii'ect. 

This move at its inception had for its ultimate object 
the union in one political body of all the inhabitants on 
both sides of the River between Mason's Grant on the east 
side and the Green Mountains on the west, — the original 
scheme of New Connecticut contemplated by the College 
Hall convention of 1776. It made its start from Cumber- 
land County, the party there, so long adhering to New 
York, wearied with their experiences, being now ready to 
withdraw from her. The initiative was taken on the 
thu'ty-first of October, when a convention met at Brattle- 
borough and named delegates to join others to be appointed 
from Gloucester County and the east side Grafton County, 



The Play for a State 291 

and devise measures to bring about such a union. A week 
later the delegates for these three counties met on the east 
side, at Charlestown, and decided before going any further 
with the scheme to take means for ascertaining more fully 
the sentiment of the several towns upon it. lu another 
week a convention of delegates from the east side towns 
south of Charlestown, which comprised the New Hamp- 
shire Chester County, together with committees from the 
three counties previously moving, assembled at Walpole 
and took definite action in perfecting a plan for a general 
convention of representatives of all the grants at Charles- 
town in the following January (1781). While the Che- 
shire County men were loyal to New Hampshire they had 
the same repugnance as the upper River leaders to a boun- 
dary at the River, and were impatient with the halting 
course of the Exeter government. Their hope was strong 
that the movement now begun would bring the issue to a 
conclusion, with the establishment of New Hampshire's ju- 
risdiction definitely across the River. 

The Charlestown assembly was the largest and most im- 
portant of the series of state-making, or state-attempting, 
conventions in the Valley. And here the play of the poli- 
ticians was the shrewdest and boldest, beautiful in its 
audacity. 

Upon the appointed day, January 16, forty-three towns 
on both sides of the River appeared by then- delegates in 
the Charlestown meeting-house. The College party had 
the organization. At the opening of the game the parti- 
sans of three of the four interests — the College party, 
the Exeter government, and New York — were practically 
imited for present purposes vipon the scheme of a boundary 
at the Green Moimtains, with all the grants east of the 
ridge in the jiu-isdiction of New Hampshire and all west 



292 Connecticut River 

.of it attached to New York. Vermont was not yet repre- 
sented, and she was counted out of the reckoning. But 
Ira Allen was on the way, post haste, under appointment 
from the governor and council with carte blanche to take 
whatever measures in its interest his '' prudence should 
dictate." He had also provided himself with credentials 
as a member from one of the towns. When he arrived 
the convention had been in session two days, and every- 
thing was going the way of the combined interests. He 
did not take his seat or produce his credentials. Instead, 
he put in his work among the members in the lobby with 
energy and tact, to undo what had been so far accomplished 
and to bring the convention to his side. A committee 
assigned to shape the business had reported for the union 
with New Hampshire, and their report had been adopted 
by a strong majority. Allen and his aids secured a recom- 
mitment of the report over night, ostensibly for verbal 
corrections and to be " fitted for the press." The next 
morning Vermont was found to be at the fore, with the 
game in her hands. A majority of the committee had 
been induced to reverse the report, which now provided 
for the vmion with Vermont of all the territory lying west 
of the Mason line ; and the delegates had teen so turned 
about that the revised report was adopted by an almost 
imanimous vote. 

How Allen with his few Benningtonian aids performed 
this legerdemain history does not tell. Allen's own secret 
report narrates that he informed some " confidential per- 
sons " that the governor and council and other " leading 
characters " on the west side of the mountains were now 
for extending Vermont's claim of jurisdiction to the Mason 
line, and that " if the convention would take proper mea- 
sures " he was authorized to give assurance that the 



The Play for a State 293 

Assembly would extend such claim at their approaching 
session in February, notwithstanding the dissolution of 
the union with the sixteen towns three years before. He 
made note of the fact that an influential number of the 
delegates were members of the New Hampshire Council 
and Assemljly ; and he was pardonably jubilant in his 
observation that " the friends of New Hampshire were 
much pleased with their work and well enjoyed the night " 
during which he was engaged in working his scheme. 

General Benjamin Bellows, of Walpole, who as head of 
the committee had made the first report, and ten others 
of Cheshire County, entered a remonstrance against the 
final action and withdrew from the convention. They 
were ready, they said, either to join New Hampshire or 
set up a new stale between the heights of land on both 
sides of the River; but they could not join Vermont. 
After their withdrawal the convention appointed a com- 
mittee to confer with the Vermont Assembly at the Feb- 
ruary session, and then adjom-ned, next to assemble in the 
meeting-house at Cornish, on the day of the Assembly's 
meeting across the River at Windsor. 

Thus again, as in 1778, at Cornish and Windsor, nego- 
tiations for the union of the east and west side grants in 
one political body were successfully carried out ; now, 
however, on a larger scale than before and under differing 
conditions. 

First, a committee from the Convention at Cornish 
crossed over to the Assembly at Windsor and formally 
presented their proposition. This committee the College 
party dominated with Colonel Payne of Lebanon as chair- 
man, and Professor Woodward as a member. At the 
same time the Assembly received a petition from eleven 
towns in the northeast part of New York, near the Hudson, 



294 Connecticut River 

also for admission to Vermont. Both communications 
were met with a resolve laying jurisdictional claims over 
all of the territory east and west of the River to the 
Mason line on the one side and the Hudson on the other ; 
with this proviso, however : that jurisdiction be not exer- 
cised " for the time being." Subsequently the articles of 
union were agreed to, and mutually confirmed by Assembly 
and Convention, to take effect when ratified by two-thirds 
of the interested towns. Then both bodies adjourned to 
await the action of their respective constituencies. 

Upon reassembling in April, again at Windsor and 
Cornish, the return showed a ratification of the union by 
a requisite number of towns. Accordingly it was imme- 
diately consummated by the admission to seats in the 
Assembly of representatives of thirty-four towns east of 
the River. Among these new members appeared Professor 
Woodward and most of the other leaders of the College 
party. 

Thus the original sixteen east-side towns controlled by 
the College party, with eighteen others in their company, 
became again constitutional members of the State of Ver- 
mont. And for a time things went on swimmingly. At 
the April session of the Assembly new counties were 
created in the place of the old ones, courts established, 
militia organized east of the River, and other measures 
taken to cement the new union. At the next session, held 
in June at Bennington, the eleven seceding New York 
towns toward the Hudson were admitted on similar terms 
to those east of the Connecticut. These annexed districts 
were designated respectively the Western Union and the 
Eastern Union. At this session Professor Woodward, and 
Jonas Fay and Ira Allen of the Benningtonians, were 
named as a committee to attend upon Congress and make 



The Play for a State 295 

a new application for the admission of Vermont, with 
authority, in the event of success, to take seats as delegates 
from the state. In September or October Colonel Payne 
was chosen lieutenant governor of the state. In October 
the Assembly met for the first and only time on the east 
side of the River, — at Charlestown, — with the College 
party now in full swing. 

While the Bennington party had kept to the letter of 
Ira Allen's promises at the Charlestown convention in 
January, still they had so manoeuvred as to retain the 
power in their hands. They had fostered the union as a 
necessity to preserve and maintain the life and independ- 
ence of Vermont, but the right of dissolving it remained 
with the state. The extension of her jurisdiction east and 
west over the whole of the grants was, in fact, only a 
claim or claims not to be exercised if disapproved by Con- 
gress. The Benningtonians were prepared to relinquish 
both claims if opportimity should come in that way to 
attain their great desire — the recognition of the sove- 
reignty of their state at all hazards. So they " bided their 
time " and observed with satisfaction the rising tumult 
against the combination. 

New Hampshire, now roused, was pressing her delegates 
in Congress to secure her claim to Vermont's territory, 
while at home she was taking measures for the defence of 
her invaded jurisdiction. In many of the east-side towns 
an active minority were resisting the authority of Vermont, 
and collisions were frequent between the officers and par- 
tisans of the two governments. These conflicts were most 
serious in Cheshire County. At one time the New Hamp- 
shire county sheriff, Colonel Enoch Hale of Walpole, when 
attempting to release from the jail in Charlestown some 
townsmen of Chesterfield who had been taken for resisting 



296 Connecticut River 

a constable, was himself seized and incarcerated ; and his 
case became a cause celebre in the Upper Valley. In retali- 
ation, a Vermont county sheriff, Dr. William Page of 
Charlestown, was clapped into jail at Exeter, by order of 
the New Hampshire legislature, upon his appearance there 
as one of three commissioners sent over by the Vermont 
government to endeavor to settle local disputes. During 
the controversies threats of raising the militia were made 
by both states, and civil war in the border towns was 
imminent. At a critical stage orders for marching the 
militia of Vermont into the warring district were actually 
issued, but fortunately were countermanded when peacefid 
negotiations intervened. 

In August Messrs. Woodward, Fay, and Allen were 
in Philadelphia on their mission pressing Vermont's renewed 
claims ujwn Congress. On the twentieth. Congress acted 
to the extent of a declaration making conditions as an indis- 
pensable preliminary to the state's recognition. These 
conditions were the relinquishment by Vermont of all 
demands to lands or jurisdiction on the east side of the 
west bank of the Connecticut, and west of a line twenty 
miles east of the Hudson : in other words, her abandonment 
of the Eastern and Western Unions. With this definite 
proposition the committee appeared at the Assembly that 
convened at Charlestown on the eleventh of October. 

One hundred and two towns were represented at this 
sitting, thirty-six of them east of the River. The members 
assembled under disquieting circumstances, for reports 
were abroad that New Hampshire troops would attempt 
to prevent the meeting. In fact a regiment had marched 
into Charlestown a few days before and quartered at the 
fort. Shortly after there ai-rived three hundredweight of 
powder, six hundredweight of l^alls, and a thousand flints. 



The Play for a State 297 

Meanwhile, at Cornish, Colonel Chase of the Vermont 
mUitia had ordered his captains to muster then* companies 
in readiness for any emergency. All this had an ominous 
look. No trouble, however, arose, although the soldiery 
remained in the town for some time. Probably the gath- 
ering of Colonel Reynolds and his men here at this juncture 
was quite independent of the Assembly's meeting. They 
had been enlisted under a requisition for recruiting the 
Continental army, and were on their way to service ; but 
their presence may have served to influence the Assembly's 
leaders to prompt and uncompromising action on the 
questions at issue which marked this sitting. 

The report, of the Philadelphia mission was the subject 
of discussion for fom- days. The offer of definite terms by 
Congress as an "indispensable preliminary" was consid- 
ered, and so treated, as a virtual engagement to admit the 
state to the national confederation upon her acceptance of 
the terms. Notwithstanding the alluring inducement, the 
Assembly determined to hold fast to the Eastern and 
Western Unions, and to decline to submit the question of 
the independence of Vermont to the " arbitrament of any 
power whatever." On the last day of the session the 
members were cheered by the arrival of an express with 
great news. The announcement was made and duly 
recorded, " That on the 19th inst. the proud Cornwallis 
had unconditionally surrendered with his whole army to 
the illustrious Washington." 

With the engineering of this Charlestown session the 
College party's leadership ended. Their star was about 
to fall and forever. 

In the interim between the adjournment at Charles- 
town and the next sitting of the Assembly, called for 
January 31 (1782) at Bennington, various forces were 



298 Connecticut River 

diligently at work, and the Bennington party were 
shrewdly manoeuvering. When the time for this mid- 
winter meeting came great plans had matured. The 
gathering of representatives was comparatively small, few 
if any from the River region having arrived ; for it was 
the worst season for travel in that primitive day of rough 
roads, or of no roads at all in the passes through the hills. 
Before the close of February the work at Charlestown had 
been undone with the adoption of a resolution accepting 
the terms of Congress. All claims to territory without 
the bounds named in the terms were now formally relin- 
quished, and the Eastern and Western Unions completely 
dissolved. This accomplished, agents were hurried off to 
Philadelphia, under secret instructions, confident of at last 
gaining the coveted recognition, the assumed stipulated 
price having been fully met. How they failed even to 
receive consideration of the matter at this time, how nine 
more years elapsed before the state was admitted, and how 
Vermont bravely developed during this period as an inde- 
pendent republic — all this is another story. 

The College party, however, did not tamely pass from 
the stage. 

Only two days after the final vote dissolving the 
Unions, leading members of the Assembly from east of 
the River reached Bennington. Immediately they pre- 
pared and sent out a call for a convention of the excluded 
River towns to meet at Dresden in March, and devise 
measures " relative to the settlement of animosities . . . 
in order for an honorable union with New Hampshire." 
This convention duly met at Colonel Brewster's Hanover 
inn, and named a committee to ajjply to the New Hamp- 
shire Assembly for the re-admission of the seceders upon 
certain terms covered by fifteen articles carefully drawn 



The Play for a State 299 

by the College statesmen. But New Hampshire now had 
the wayward towns at her mercy. The Assembly refused 
to accept any but unconditional submission. 

In May five River towns on the west side — Hartford, 
Norwich, Moretown (Bradford), and Newbury, — through 
their committees meeting at Thetford, also petitioned for 
admission to New Hampshire. Thereupon the Assembly 
expressed the willingness of the state to extend her juris- 
diction to the Green Mountains, provided the " generahty 
of the inhabitants thereof should desire it," and that New 
York should settle a boundary-line upon the mountains — 
thus absorbing Vermont. Nothing came of this. In due 
time the boimdary between New Hampshire and Vermont 
was permanently fixed at the west bank of the River. 
Thus New Hampshire possesses the River's bed. 

With the final reabsorption of the east side towns by 
New Hampshire the College statesmen returned to their 
books and their professional work. They played no more 
at state-making or state-guiding. Occasionally they reap- 
peared on the political horizon concerned in such issues of 
local import as questions of taxation, when their skilful 
pens were again employed in shaping argiunentative 
memorials. The Assembly of Vermont continued to come 
to the Valley for frequent sittings — mostly at Windsor, 
meeting once at Westminster and once at Norwich — till 
the close of 1785 ; and in the autumn of 1789 the New 
Hampshire legislatiu-e assembled at Charlestown, when 
Governor John Sullivan and the council were grandly en- 
tertained at Abel Walker's tavern, where Governor Chitten- 
den with his council had " put up " seven years before. 
But the college men had slight interest in these goings on. 



300 Connecticut River 

Bitterness against the College party still continued to 
be cherished by the dominant party in New Hampshire 
for years after. It was carried into the generation that 
followed, when it culminated in 1815 in the attempt to 
wrest the control of the College from the corporation 
established by the royal charter, and vest it in the legis- 
latiure ; the setting up of the rival " Dartmouth University " 
by the side of the College ; and the waging of the hot 
Dartmouth Controversy, finally settled by the United States 
Supreme Court with the decision for the College, — a story 
which moved a Dartmouth orator to advise the inscription 
above the door of the institution : " Founded by Eleazar 
Wheelock : Refounded by Daniel Webster." 




o n 






II 

EOMANCES OF NAVIGATION 



301 



XXI 

An Early Colonial Highway 

The River an important Thoroughfare through Colony Times — The first White 
Man's Craft on its Waters — Dutch and English Trading Ships — Wil- 
liam Pynchon the first River Merchant — Prosperous Traffic in Furs, 
Skins, and Hemp ^ The earliest Flatboats operating between the Falls — 
Seventeenth Century Shipbuilding — River-built Ships sent out on long 
Foreign Voyages — The Rig of the Flatboat as developed by Colonial 
Builders — System of Up-River Transportation in the latter Colonial Period 
— Lumber Rafts — Early Ferries. 

ALL through colonial times the Connecticut was a 
r\ highway of importance for pursuits of trade and of 
war. At first its navigation by the white man's craft was 
confined to the sixty miles between the River's mouth and 
the head of tide-water below Enfield Falls. Soon after the 
coming of the English colonists, however, the flatboat, or 
scow, was contrived which could run the Enfield rapids at 
high water, and then navigation extended to Springfield. 
Above commerce was carried on only through the Massa- 
chusetts Reach by means of canoes or rafts or flatboats be- 
tween the falls, till the middle of the eighteenth century. 
But long before that time the craft of the white hunter and 
trapper, the frontiersman, the scout and the soldier had 
navigated the far northern reaches; while the Indians, the 
River's first navigators, were paddling its sinuous length in 
their bark canoes and dugouts on fishing or hunting expe- 
ditions, or on predatory incursions against the New England 
frontiers. And during the tragic years of the French and 
Indian wars it was the great military thoroughfare. 

303 



304 Connecticut River 

The year 1633, with the establishment of the rival 
Dutch and Pilgrim trading houses, is usually given as the 
date of the opening of the River to commercial navigation. 
But in this statement no account is taken of the presence 
of Dutch trading vessels hei'e for a decade before. It were 
closer to the record to say that in 1633, when English ships 
first came in and began to compete with the Dutch for its 
trade, the River was opened generally to navigation. Very 
soon the English were in successful competition with their 
rivals, and their little vessels were taking out rich cargoes 
of the VaUey products, mostly to port at Boston for ship- 
ment to England. The Dutch ships carried their cargoes 
to New Amsterdam generally for shipment to Holland; 
and it is said that some of them sailed dkect from the 
River to the home ports. The earliest Dutch craft in the 
River have been described as " yachts," small sloops and 
periaguas. The earliest English vessels of record were 
barks, lighters, pinks, pinnaces, and shallops. 

Although the Plymouth men were the first English 
traders in the River with their " great new bark " and other 
ships, the Bay Colony men were " close seconds," as we have 
seen. William Pynchon, with his foundation of Springfield 
in 1636, was the first to establish a systematic River busi- 
ness. He had then the advantage of exclusive privileges, 
being one of those to whom the standing council of Massa- 
chusetts Bay farmed out all trading with the Indians in 
beaver and other furs for a specified term. To facilitate 
transportation between Enfield rapids and the Springfield 
settlement, Pynchon built a storage warehouse on the shore 
below the falls which gave its name to Warehouse Point. 
Here was the up-river landing of his first trading shallop 
(the same that was later impressed for the Pequot War). 
After the Pequot War the River's navigation to Warehouse 



An Early Colonial Highway 305 

Point increased, and trade became profitable to the colon- 
ists, especially the Pynchons — William and Major John, 
his son, who succeeded him. 

The earliest traffic was in f lu-s, skins, and hemp brought 
in by the Indians. Major Pynchon and his associates 
sometimes sent out in a single ship to England, a thousand 
pounds' sterling worth of otter and beaver skins. The 
beaver trade remained for a considerable time in the hands 
of Major Pynchon and a few merchants in the lower towns 
to whom the Connecticut court committed its exclusive 
charge. An abundance of beaver then inhabited the lower 
streams which flow into the River. Many beaver and other 
skins were also brought down the River by the Indians 
from the distant west and north. Major PjTichon's account 
books, which are preserved in the Springfield City Li- 
brary, covering a period of thirty years from 1650, give 
interesting details of the River's early trade and shipments. 
During that time the major packed, mostly in hogsheads, 
many thousand beaver-skins, worth about eight shillings 
sterling a pound in England. Other skins shipped by him 
were of the grey and the red fox, the muskrat, the raccoon, 
the marten, the fisher, mink, wildcat, and moose, the 
latter skins weighing from twelve to twenty-five pounds 
each. 

When the flatboat was first employed on the River is 
not definitely known, but it was p'l'obably very early in use, 
working between Warehouse Point and Springfield. The 
first flatboats were built by the earliest Springfield colonists, 
and men soon became skiKul in running them over the 
rapids. Later on there were Hadley and Northampton 
boats and boatmen in regular service. As settlements ad- 
vanced up the River above the Massachusetts line, larger 
flatboats were operated between the various falls, the 



306 Connecticut River 

.freight being unloaded at the foot of each fall, and trans- 
ported around it on shore by teams, — ox-teams at first, • — 
to be reloaded on the boats above. Thus a definite and 
remunerative occupation in addition to farming was af- 
forded the dwellers near each fall. Warehouse Point was 
the place of transhipment of freight from sloops to the 
fiatboats through the colony period, and afterward till the 
opening years of the nineteenth century. The erection of 
the first Hartford bridge across the River, in 1809, ob- 
structed the passage of the larger sloops, and then Hart- 
ford became the principal port of transhipment. 

The canoes first used for River service were fashioned 
after the Indian dugouts, from trees cut on the River's 
banks. It was early found necessary to protect " canoe 
trees " from spoliation, and orders were passed by Spring- 
field, nd probably by other settlements, prohibiting the 
felling of such trees within the bounds of the plantation 
without general consent. These canoes, used in crossing 
from shore to shore or in passing between the settlements, 
as well as for freightage, and mingling with the graceful 
birchen craft of friendly bartering Indians, must have 
brightened the River about the lonely plantations. But 
there could have been no more heartening sight than the 
spectacle, in the spring of 1638, of the fleet of fifty 
Indian canoes sweeping down from the Indian village of 
Pocumtuck (Deerfield), all heaped up with luscious corn, 
for the relief of the lower River towns impoverished by the 
Pequot War of the previous year and in danger of starva- 
tion. " Never was the like known to this day," wrote 
chivalrous Captain John Mason in his history thirty years 
after. 

Many of the seventeenth century vessels in the River's 
navigation were built on its lower banks, from native 



An Early Colonial Highway 307 

timber. Among the first were ketches, pinks, and shallops. 
A policy for the encouragement of shipbuilding was very 
early adopted by the Connecticut Colony. Before the 
middle of the seventeenth century Hartford men were 
sending out River-built ships on distant voyages, freighted 
with the products of the Valley to be bartered for the 
commodities of foreign parts, all sorts of necessities for a 
new coimtry, among them much " rumme " and occasional 
wines. These vessels, says a local chronicler, were sent 
forth " on to Boston, Newfoundland, New York, Delaware, 
Barbadoes, Jamaica ; or, occasionally, to Fayal and to the 
Wine and Madeira Isles." By 1666 vessels on the stocks 
were exempted from taxation. In 1676 Hartford had 
among her craft a ketch of ninety tons ; and Middletown, 
a ship of seventy tons. By 1680 ships, ketches, and pinks 
of from fifty to eighty tons, with smaller sloops and barques, 
were navigating the River to Hartford and Warehouse 
Point. 

The flatboats as developed by the colonial builders were 
generally provided with a square mainsaU set in the middle 
of the craft and extending some feet each side of it, and a 
topsail which was useful only before the wind. Three 
sails were sometimes carried, the third sail rigged above 
the topsail in very light winds. When the wind was 
unfavorable these boats were propelled by poling, or 
" snubbing " along shore, with " setting poles." The poles 
were of white ash from twelve to twenty feet long, with 
a socket-spike in the lower end. The polers came to be 
called spike-pole men. They worked one on each side of 
the smaller boats and three on each side on the larger. 
The operation was slow and laborious. Each poleman, 
placing the spiked end of his pole firmly on the river bot- 
tom and pressing the head of the upper end against his 



308 Connecticut River 

shoulder, walked from the front of the boat to the mast- 
board, shoving with all his force as he walked. The inside 
oarsmen worked with the shorter poles. The captain did 
the steering in the stern, in the smaller craft using a wide- 
bladed oar. The poling was the hardest kind of labor. 
Each season great thick callouses as large as the hand were 
raised on the front of the polers' shoulders, lacerated and 
bloody at the beginning of the work. The lx)ats were flat- 
bottomed and drew only from two to three feet of water. 
The freight carried was packed around the central mast. 

Before the close of the colony period the system of 
transportation above tide-water by flatboats between the 
successive falls and by teams on shore around them, had 
been advanced manymiles northward to meet trade demands 
or supply the necessaries of life to the developing up-river 
settlements on the "New Hampshire Grants" and the 
growing northern country. At the approach of the Revo- 
lution the head of boat navigation had reached the then 
new village of Wells River, in the Vermont Newbury, lying 
in the deep narrow Valley at the confluence of Wells River 
and our stream, the imusual picturesqueness of which 
to-day invites the traveller as he gazes down upon it from 
the Wells River Junction of railways. The flatboats of 
that time, bringing up miscellaneous cargoes of merchan- 
dise, with iron, salt, molasses, and much rum, were returned 
down river laden with shingles, potash, and other products 
of the region, for Hartford and below. Rafts of lumber 
were also piloted down, in " boxes," sometimes sixty feet 
long and a dozen feet wide. Many men were engaged 
directly or indirectly in the River service. Passengers as 
well as merchandise were occasionally transported up the 
riverway on the freight boats. Household goods were 
also carried up for new settlers. 



An Early Colonial Highway 309 

There being no bridges at any point across the Kiver 
till after the Revolution, the ferry was an important insti- 
tution in the advancing settlements and the ferryman a 
useful and important personage. The chain ferry, still 
seen at intervals along the River, was early in use, suc- 
ceeding the canoe and the raft ferry. 



XXII 

I^ocks and Canals 

The first River in the Country to be Improved by Canals — The Initial Charter 
issued by Vermont in 1791 — First Worlc in the Massachusetts Reach — 
Locking of South Hadley Falls in 1795 — A Remarkable Achievement for 
that Day — Unique Features of the Constraction — The System as Devel- 
oped Northward — Wells River Village Head of Navigation — River Life 
then Animated and Bustling — Improved Types of Freight-Boats — Schemes 
for Extending the System with great Rival Projects — Final crushing 
Competition of the Railroads. 

YERY soon after the close of the Revolution, when 
internal improvements were planning in various 
parts of the new nation, large schemes were formulated by 
Connecticut Valley men for increasing the navigability of 
the River northward by means of a system of canals around 
the principal falls ; and by 1795, before the establishment 
of similar enterprises elsewhere in the country, the first 
work in a projected series was finished. Thus the Con- 
necticut was the first river in America to be improved by 
canals. It has the further distinction of having been navi- 
gated above tide-water, during its career of activity, more 
than any other river in New England. 

The institution of the canal system was stimulated in 
part by the rivalry between the seaport towns of Massa- 
chusetts and the lower River centres of Hartford and 
Springfield for the control of the trade of northern New 
England. With the substitution to an appreciable extent 
of unobstructed up-river navigation during the open sea- 
sons for the cumbrous system of part water and part land 

.310 



Locks and Canals 311 

carriage, the lower towns, brought commercially nearer to 
the upper country, would gain a distinct advantage. Accord- 
ingly their merchants and shippers were quick to encourage 
the scheme, and moneyed men stood ready to invest in the 
undertaking, new and untried in the country as it was, as 
soon as its feasibility was demonstrated to their satisfaction. 
The first charter for a canal, however, came from the 
north. It issued in 1791, with the virile acts of the first 
legislatiu"e of the finally admitted state of Vermont, sitting 
at the Vermont Windsor. It was granted to two upper- 
Valley men of affairs — General Lewis B. Morris of the 
Vermont Springfield, and Dr. William Page of Charlestown, 
opposite, as " The Company for rendering the Connecticut 
River Navigable by Bellows Falls." But early in the next 
year, 1792, before this company had become established, 
Massachusetts chartered " The Proprietors of the Locks 
and Canals on the Connecticut River," for the purpose of 
making the stream " passable for boats and other things," 
from the mouth of Chicopee River throughout the state ; 
and this corporation put the first work through. 

The Massachusetts proprietors contemplated at the out- 
set the locking of the two great falls in the Massachusetts 
Reach, — the South Hadley and Turner's Falls. It was a 
strong organization composed of men of leading in several 
lower Valley towns, principally Springfield, Northampton, 
and Deerfield ; with a few of Berkshire. In the list one 
observes such representative central and western Massa- 
chusetts names as Worthington, Lyman, and Dwight of 
Springfield ; Strong and Breck of Northampton ; Williams 
and Hoyt of Deerfield ; Moore of Greenfield ; Sedgwick of 
Stockbridge. John Williams of Deerfield, a great-grand- 
son of the " Redeemed Captive," was largely instrumental 
in its promotion. Capital from Holland, at that time the 



312 Connecticut River 

financial centre of Europe, was brought into the enterprise, 
and Mr. Williams was associated with Stephen Higginson 
of Boston, the merchant grandfather of Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, as agent of the Dutch firms investing. Routes 
for both canals were marked out and surveyed in the sum- 
mer of 1792, while at the same time surveys were making 
for another company proposing a canal from Boston to 
the Connecticut at Deerfield, — a plan which developed 
no fiuther. The South Hadley work was the first to be 
completed. 

The construction of this initial enterprise, the germ 
of the great hydraulic works of Holyoke to-day, was a 
remarkable achievement of that time. Its builders, with 
no precedent in the country to follow, were obliged to 
execute it largely on original lines. Benjamin Prescott 
of Northampton, in after years a superintendent of the 
arsenal at Springfield, was the supervising engineer. Most 
of the way the cutting was through solid red slate rock, 
and proved costly. The canal began at a point by the 
South Hadley end of the present great dam, and extended 
two and a half miles along the River's trend northward, 
entering the River above a wing dam projected obliquely 
outward. The capacity of the waterway was equal to the 
transportation of boats or rafts forty feet long and twenty 
feet wide. The style of machinery provided for propelling 
craft through was unique. As described by Dr. Josiah G. 
Holland a half-century ago : " At the point where boats 
were to be lowered and elevated was a long inclined plane 
traversed by a car of the width of the canal and of suffi- 
cient length to take on a boat or a section of a raft. At 
the top of this inclined plane were two large water-wheels, 
one on either side of the canal, which furnished, by the 
aid of the water of the canal, the power for elevating the 




Seal of the Proprietors of Locks 

and Canals. 

Showing the contrivance first used at 

South Hadley for passing boats. 



Locks and Canals 313 

car and for balancing and controlling it in its descent. At 
the foot of the inclined plane the car descended into the 
water of the canal, being entirely submerged. A boat 
ascending the river and passing into the canal would be 
floated directly over and into the car, the brim of the lattter, 
of course, being gauged to a water level by its elevation 
aft in proportion to the angle of the inclination of the 
traverse way. The boat being secure in the car, the water 
was let upon the water-wheels, which by their common 
shaft were attached to the car through two immense cables, 
and thus, winding the cables, the boat passed out into the 
canal above. The reverse of the operation . . . transferred 
a boat, or the section of a raft, from above downwards." 
The completion of the work and the successful passage 
of the first boat through the canal, in 1795, were matters 
for great congratulation to the proprietors. But the out- 
look was not all rosy for them. The expenditure had been 
much heavier than anticipated, — an assessment of over 
eighty thousand dollars on the shares of the stock was 
large for those modest days of financiering, — and profits 
were uncertain. Litigation, also, followed the erection of 
the first dam, since it was so built as to set the River's 
water back for some miles, thus flowing the Northampton 
meadows, and causing an epidemic of intermittent fever. 
The structm-e was condemned as a nuisance, and all but 
the oblique section had to be torn down. This trouble 
scared off the Dutch investors, and they sold out their 
holdings at a sacrifice. The stock ultimately came to be 
held by a few hands, and thereafter was profitable. Mean- 
while commerce through the canal had steadily increased, 
and the lowering of the bed for deeper water was impera- 
tive. This work was undertaken with funds raised by a 
lottery authorized by the Massachusetts General Court of 



314 Connecticut River 

1802, the system still in favor then for aiding the con- 
struction of quasi public works as well as for building 
bridges and turnpikes. The deepening was accomplished 
by 1805, with other improvements, among them the sub- 
stitution of the simple lock system for the device of car 
and cable. 

The Turner's Falls canal was opened for service in 
1800. Its completion fell to a second company, " The 
Proprietors of the Upper Locks and Canal on Connecticut 
River," incorporated in 1794, when the interests of the 
original corporation were divided, the lower work being 
all that it could comfortably carry. The stockholders in 
the two corporations, however, were practically the same. 
This canal was about three miles in length, extending 
from the jimction of the Deerfield with the Connecticut, 
to a point just above the present dam at Tiuner's Falls, 
and had ten locks. 

The works at Bellows Falls were the third in chrono- 
logical order, the canal here being ready for business in 
the autumn of 1802. This was a short canal, as compared 
with the Massachusetts concerns, and had eight locks. The 
company incorporated by Vermont to build it subsequently 
obtained a charter from New Hampshire. Dr. Page of the 
original corporators executed the work as civil engineer ; 
but the capital came from England. It was fiu-nished by 
a wealthy Londoner, Hodgson Atkinson, who never saw 
the works, for he never came to America. The property 
remained in the Atkinson family for seventy-four years. 
Hence the name of Atkinson applied to one of the present 
thoroughfares in the picturesque village of Bellows Falls. 

Two small upper canals next luiilt completed the sys- 
tem northward. One of these was at Water-Queeche, now 
Sumner's Falls, midway between the towns of Hartland 




73. 
'(n 






in ^ 

9^ 



o s 

O S 

2 1 

O ? 



Locks and Canals 315 

and North Hartland on the Vermont side. The other 
was about three miles above White River Junction, where 
now is the Vermont village of Wilder. The latter work 
made it possible for boats to approach Barnet, Vermont, 
at the foot of the Fifteen-Miles Falls, two himdred and 
twenty miles above Hartford. Although early chartered, 
first by Vermont in 1794, and afterward by New Hamp- 
shire, these northernmost canals were not in operation till 
after 1810. 

The five sets of works now established constituted 
the canal system through a large part of the period of 
the greatest activity on the River above tide-water, for the 
sixth of the series — the Enfield canal around the lowest 
falls, — was not opened till 1829, a decade only before the 
advent of the railroad in the Valley, which changed speedily 
the whole aspect of things. 

The River life was most animated after the introduc- 
tion of the canal system through the first third of the 
nineteenth century. Numerous towns along the River's 
banks in the upper states, now serene and retired with the 
dignity of a prosperous past, were then brisk and bustling 
places. The River became a main artery, and the turnpike 
the land-thoroughfare between the seaboard and the northern 
country, with the river-boat, the stage-coach, and the great 
goods-wagon as the popular means of transportation. The 
landings established at various points along the River were 
then the favorite gathering-places for leisurely townsfolk 
and villagers to " see the boat come in," as the rural rail- 
way station in after years became at " train time." Then 
was the day of the " River gods," a term applied to expert 
handlers of boats and masters of transportation, as well as 
to the Valley political leaders. The men then in the River 
service were " the stoutest, heartiest, and merriest " in the 



316 Connecticut River 

Valley. When the boats were speeding under a spanking 
breeze and there was rest from poling, their songs echoed 
over the River banks : and some of them were glorious 
singers. Marvellous tales are told of their wondrous 
strength. There was one " Bill " Cummins, who was 
wont jaimtily to " lift a barrel of salt with one hand by 
putting two fingers in the bung-hole, and set it from the 
bottom timbers " of a boat " on top of the mastboard." 

As traffic increased, or after the opening of the Enfield 
Canal, larger freight-boats were constructed. The per- 
fected type was a flatboat of stout oak, averaging seventy 
feet in length, twelve or thirteen in width at the bow, ten 
at the stern, and fifteen at the mast, which stood about 
twenty-five feet from the bow. In the stern was a snug 
cabin. The mast was high, rigged with shifting shroud 
and forestays, a topmast to be run up when needed, the 
mainsail about thirty by eighteen feet, and the topsail twenty- 
four by twelve feet. The capacity of this class of boat was 
from thirty to forty tons. Smaller boats, generally built 
in the Upper Valley, were of about twenty-five tons bur- 
den. These were without cabins. The captain and crew 
of the larger type lived on board during the voyage north 
and return ; the crews of the smaller craft boarded at farm- 
houses along shore. The passage was made only in the 
daytime, the boats being tied up to the shore at night. 
The upward course naturally occupied the longer time, the 
length varying with the wind. The average time was 
twenty days for the up-trip from Hartford to Wells River, 
and ten days down to tide-water. Sometimes the voyage 
up and return was made in twenty-five days. Between 
Hartford and Bellows Falls the round trip averaged about 
two weeks. The downward voyage from Bellows Falls 
usually occupied three days, Northfield being made the 







Q 






Locks and Canals 317 

first day, Springfield the second, and Hartford the thu-d. 

At several points helpers had to be employed beside 
the crews of polemen. About Bellows Falls particularly 
difficulties were not infrequently encountered which profited 
the pockets of the dwellers in the neighborhood. When 
a strong south wind was blowing boats coming down stream 
after leaving the canal became entangled in the eddy of 
the River at this point, the contrary currents being much 
stronger then than now. A rope running through a ring 
on a post, which was set into the River at the south end of 
the eddy, was provided, by which a boat could be pulled 
into the outward current by helpers. One " Old Seth 
Hapgood," who lived near by, was for years especially 
active in this work, keeping a pair of oxen in readiness 
for it. Hitching his team to one end of the post-rope, the 
other end of which was fastened to the boat, he would 
bestride the " nigh " ox, drive out into the River as far as 
possible, and tug into the proper current. It became a 
common saying among River men that " Old Seth Hapgood 
prayed every morning for a south wind." At Enfield Falls, 
on the up voyage, as many men as there were tons of freight 
on board were required to pole a boat over the rapids except 
when the wind was favorable. Only about ten or twelve 
tons could be carried over, the excess of cargo being carted 
around by wagons, and reshipped at Thompsonville, five 
miles above Warehouse Point. The extra polers were 
called " Fallsmen." It required about a day to make the 
passage. 

Barnet, ten miles above Wells River village, was the 
ultima thule of navigation, the Fifteen-Miles Falls barring 
all boat progress beyond that point. But Wells River vil- 
lage remained the practical head of the river transporta- 
tion. With the opening of the upper canals larger amounts 



318 Connecticut River 

of goods began to be brought up to this depot and distrib- 
uted thence by wagons and carts farther up country. 
The records of a storage warehouse here, from 1810 to 1816, 
quoted by the historian of Newbury, show that towns sixty 
miles north received their supplies in this way. The cost 
of transportation fluctuated with the circumstances attend- 
ing it, and the changing rates of the canal toUs. In the 
early twenties the combined tolls between Hartford and 
Wells River averaged four dollars a ton. The added ex- 
pense of extra help on the up voyage and pilotage down, 
brought the average total cost to nearly six dollars a ton 
each way. 

Still the River transportation business grew and con- 
tinued profitable to the boating companies and the lower 
River towns ; and for a considerable period they controlled 
the best of the the up-country trade dm-ing the boating 
seasons, though competitors from other directions were 
pressing in. Till the eigh teen-twenties the chief compe- 
tition was with the eastern seaport towns, connected with 
the north by way of the Middlesex Canal from Boston to 
the Merrimack River, built largely by Boston capital, and 
opened in 1803. By this way freight was transported up 
the Merrimack to Concord, New Hampshire, without break- 
ing bulk, and thence teamed north. Through transporta- 
tion rates, however, were higher than by way of Hartford 
and our River. Projects were early conceived for extend- 
ing the eastern system to the upper Connecticut by canals 
from the Merrimack, but none was carried beyond the mak- 
ing of surveys for routes. The first survey was from the 
mouth of the Contoocook in Concord to the mouth of Sugar 
River in Claremont, made in 1816. The last, made eight 
or nine years later, started from the Pemigewasset, at 
the town of Wentworth, and reached the Connecticut at 




-a 



V 

o 



i 



Locks and Canals 319 

Haverhill, near the Wells River head of navigation. 
Other surveys of the later period from the east were 
for canals projected from Dover, New Hampshire, and 
Portland, Maine. 

Meanwhile competition from the nearer seaboard had 
threatened the lower River transportation centres. A 
move had been made by New Haven to divert the trade 
to her port through a canal connecting New Haven with 
the River at a point above Hartford. This was the blow 
direct to Hartford's interests. Her merchants and allied 
business men combined to parry it with a larger enterprise. 
Then ensued a warm campaign under the impulse of which 
greater projects developed. 

The New Haven scheme began with the projected canal 
from tide-water at New Haven to Northampton. The 
counter enterprise of Hartford comprehended the locking 
of the Enfield Falls, getting control of the existing canals 
above, and improving the River's whole navigable course 
up to Barnet. The New Haven project was embodied in 
" The President, Directors, and Company of the Farming- 
ton Canal," a Connecticut corporation chartered in 1822, 
empowered to build from New Haven to the Connecticut 
state line at Southwick, Massachusetts ; and ui " The 
Hampshire and Hampden Canal Company," chartered by 
Massachusetts the following year, to complete the work 
from Southwick to Northampton. The Hartford design 
was organized in " The Connecticut River Company," char- 
tered in 1824, first by Connecticut, then by Vermont and 
New Hampshire, to " improve the boat navigation through 
the Valley of Connecticut River from Hartford toward its 
somce." 

The forces thus arrayed were soon in strenuous rivalry, 
and the popular talk of the Valley became all of canals. 



320 Connecticut River 

The next year, 1825, the flowering season of canals in 
other parts, was full of action. In the middle of Febru- 
ary a great convention of two hundred delegates from the 
principal towns assembled at the Vermont Windsor and 
adopted a memorial to Congress for aid in schemes of upper 
River improvement. Less than ten days after, Massachu- 
setts was moving for a canal from Boston Harbor to the 
Connecticut and on to the Hudson. During the summer 
surveying parties were diligently at work up and down the 
River. A United States engineer sent from the War Depart- 
ment in prompt response to the Windsor memorial, was 
engaged upon surveys from the region of the upper head- 
waters down to Barnet ; and from Barnet toward Canada, 
for routes for a canal to Lake Memphremagog. Simulta- 
neously, Holmes Hutchinson, an engineer who had been 
employed on the Erie Canal, was making a careful survey 
from Hartford up to Barnet, at the instance of the Connec- 
ticut River Company. While these sm-veys were under 
way the negotiations of the Connecticut River Company 
for the piu-chase of the existing canals were progressing. 
In the autumn this company issued a public memorial, out- 
lining an elaborate series of improvements, based on Hut- 
chinson's report, and moved for a broader charter to carry 
out the entire work. Accordingly the Vermont Assembly 
passed an act subject to confirmation by the three other 
states concerned, which provided for a board of commis- 
sioners, three for each state, to promote the Connecticut 
River Company with sufficient capital, for the purpose of 
making good the River's navigation from Hartford to 
Barnet. 

The next year, 1826, New Hampshire and Connecticut 
confirmed this act, the latter state, however, with a proviso 
protecting New Haven's interests in the Farmingtou and 



Locks and Canals 321 

Northampton canal. Earlier the report of the United 
States engineer's survey had appeared ; also the reports of 
the surveys for the proposed Boston canal to the Connec- 
ticut and the Hudson ; all of which excited much interest 
in the Valley. One of the Massachusetts surveys covered 
a route entering the Connecticut at the mouth of Miller's 
River. Another, made by General Epaphras Hoyt, of 
Deerfield, was carried through the Turner's Falls canal 
across the River to Sheldon's Rock, and thence followed 
the west bank of the Deerfield River up to the present 
Hoosac Tunnel, where the mountain was to be cut through, 
and Troy reached by the Hoosick River. 

While these various plans were developing, the New 
Haven canal party had been broadening their scheme. 
This now also comprehended a system to Barnet. In 
June of 1827, Governor Clinton of New York, "the great 
mogul on canal matters," was brought into the region in 
the interest of this project. With General Hillhouse and 
other solid New Haven men he made a tour of inspection 
from the then partly completed Farmington canal to the 
upper country, following pretty closely the line of the pro- 
posed extension. All along the way, — at Northampton, 
Deerfield, Greenfield, Brattleborough, and above, — distin- 
guished civilities, dinners, with toasts, public receptions, 
"ovations," marked the progress of the explorers, and 
great expectations were aroused. During the same summer 
United States engineers, sent at the instance of the gov- 
ernor of Vermont, were again in the Valley surveying, 
this time to determine the practicability of canal connec- 
tion between the River and Lake Champlain. The next 
year, 1828, the New Haven plans had so far matured that 
authorization was obtained for the Hampshire and Hamp- 
den Company to extend the system from Northampton 



322 Connecticut River 

to the Massachusetts north line, at Northfield. Finally, 
in 1829, the scheme was perfected m charters obtained 
from Vermont and New Hampshire establishing " The 
Connecticut River Canal Company," empowered by the 
former state to build from its south line, at Vernon, to 
Barnet and thence to Lake Memphremagog ; and by New 
Hampshire, from its south line, at Hinsdale, to the mouth 
of Israel's River, at Lancaster : thus making provision for 
a navigable canal from the tide-waters of Long Island 
Sound to the Canada line. When these acts were secured 
the New Haven system had just been finished to Westfield, 
fifteen miles short of Northampton, and the event cele- 
brated by the launch of a fine new canal-boat in the basin. 
At the same time, however, the Connecticut River 
Company had made a greater advance with the completion 
of the Enfield Canal throughout. This accomplishment 
was marked by a gayer celebration. It was, too, a more 
momentous affair in the Valley, since it included a demon- 
stration by the first steamboats built for regular service 
on the River above tide-water. The manoeuvres of these 
little steam-craft, indeed, constituted the chief feature of 
the occasion. One of them, the " Vermont," having her 
paddles at the stern, came down from Springfield with a 
party of celebrators from up-river and sailed triumphantly 
through the length of the canal to the foot of the rapids. 
There she was met by the " Blanchard," which had come 
up from Hartford with another party. '' The stockholders 
present, with others from Hartford, Springfield and the 
neighboring towns, then went on board the ' Vermont ' 
and two other boats [flatboats] towed by horses, and set 
sail for the head of the falls. The boats were one hour 
and ten minutes passing through the canal, a distance of 
five and a half mUes, including the detention at the locks. 



Locks and Canals 323 

At this place, after an exchange of friendly salutations, 
the gentlemen from Springfield parted from the company 
and proceeded on their passage home to Vermont. After 
a short time spent in examining the excellent and sub- 
stantial construction of the Guard Lock, the rest of the 
party returned in the boats down the canal to the foot of 
the falls." " It is almost superfluous to add," the reporter 
remarks in closing his decorous account, " that the excm*- 
sion was attended with a high degree of interest, and the 
party returned home much gratified with the scenes they 
had witnessed." 

The work fully merited the commendation it received. 
It was built for water-power as well as for navigation, the 
corporation wisely recognizing the water-power as a valu- 
able part of the franchise. It comprised a wing dam at 
the head of the falls reaching to the middle of the River ; 
a long pier extending down from the lower end of the dam 
parallel to and a hundred feet from the west bank, so 
raised above the River as to form a basin and safe entrance 
to the guard lock ; a high breast-wall of solid masonry at 
right angles to the pier, extending toward the bank, and 
there united to the guard lock ; twelve sluices through the 
breast-wall with sliding gates, for the free advantage of 
water for hydraulic purposes ; and at the lower end of the 
canal, three locks of masonry, each of ten feet lift, sepa- 
rated by wide pools in which ascending and descending 
boats could pass each other. Sixteen boats loaded with 
merchandise passed through the canal on the opening day ; 
and soon the fine boats of the larger type, which now 
could pass aroimd the rapids, were built and added to the 
River's fleet. 

A few years later the New Haven system was completed 
to Northampton, and there it stopped. Nothing was done 



324 Connecticut River 

under the Vermont and New Hampshire charters. Nor 
did the Connecticut River Company carry their scheme 
beyond the Enfield Canal. The day of canal and river 
transportation was passing with the steady approach of 
the era of railroads. Spirited efforts for the sustenance of 
the fading system were made to the last. In the autumn 
of 1830 another convention was held at the upper Windsor 
to foster it. Delegates were present from each of the four 
states, and various measures to this end were adopted. 
Congress was again invoked for aid in completing the 
schemes for clearing the channels. A plan for relays of 
steam freight and passenger boats at the series of locks to 
quicken transportation was developed. Subsequently the 
system of towing strings of flatboats by steamers was 
instituted. 

At the height of these efforts the first charter for a 
railroad in Vermont was granted. In the early eigh teen- 
forties railways were building in the Valley. Within a few 
years the new system had so extended that competition 
was hopeless. Then all the canals, save that at Windsor 
Locks, were abandoned for traffic, and transformed to use 
for manufacturing piu-poses. So ended this chapter of 
great endeavors in the closed history of the up-stream 
commerce of the Beautiful River. 




o 

O 
h-I 



T3 



C 
U 



c 



o 
a 



XXIII 

Steamboats and Steamboating 

Connecticut Valley Inventors of the Steamboat — Claims of John Fitch and 
Samuel Morey to Priority over Fulton — Morey's tiny Steamer on the 
River — First Steamboats in Regular Service — Gallant Efforts for Steam- 
boat Navigation to the Upper Valley — Triumphant Progress of the Pioneer 
" Baniet " up to Bellovsrs Falls — The " Ledyard's " Achievement in Reach- 
ing Wells River — A Song of Triumph by a Local Bard — The last Fated 
Up-River Enterprise — Steamboating on the Lower Reaches — Dickens's 
Voyage in the "Massachusetts" — End of Passenger Service above Hart- 
ford. 

ON a wall of the entrance hall of the State House at 
Hartford is a bronze portrait in bas-relief with this 
inscription : " This tablet erected by the State of Connec- 
ticut commemorates the genius, patience, and perseverance 
of John Fitch, a native of the town of Windsor, the first 
to apply steam successfully to the propulsion of vessels 
through water." 

Two hundred miles up the River, in the Vermont vil- 
lage of Farrlee, is deposited the model of the engine of the 
first American steamboat propelled by paddle-wheels, in- 
vented by another Connecticut Valley man, — Captain 
Samuel Morey of Orford, opposite on the New Hampshire 
side, — and laimched on our River. 

Fitch's first steamboat was in successful operation more 
than twenty years before Fulton's " Clermont " was put on 
the Hudson ; Morey's fourteen years before. Fitch made 
his original experiments in Pennsylvania, and his first boat 
plied the Delaware. Morey's first boat was directly asso- 
ciated with the Connecticut, for on its waters it was con- 
ceived and constructed as well as operated. 

325 



326 Connecticut River 

For both of these Connecticut Valley inventors claims 
of priority over Fulton in discovering the principles de- 
veloped in his boat were defended by ardent advocates with 
vigor if not asperity in the controversy which followed 
Fulton's achievement ; and the facts of record well sustain 
their contention. Without disparaging the fame of Ful- 
ton as the earliest to combine and utilize certain principles 
in the construction of the practically useful steamboat, to 
Fitch and Morey, independently of each other, may fairly 
be accorded the honor of having originated the idea, and 
to Morey the credit of inventing the mechanism which 
Fulton applied. To Fitch is ascribed the distinction with- 
out question (for James Rumsey's claim to priority Fitch 
completely disproved) of having first exhibited in American 
waters a steamboat propelled by movable paddles. From 
Morey, before Fulton, dispassionate examiners of the record 
trace the development of steamboat propulsion by paddle- 
wheels. In their judgment, the title bestowed upon him 
of "the father of steamboat navigation in America" is 
fully warranted. 

While Fitch's achievements, attained elsewhere, are 
commemorated in the lower Valley by virtue of its having 
been his birthplace, in the Upper Valley, where it was de- 
veloped, Morey' s invention is held in closer remembrance, 
though yet immarked by public memorial. Fitch's steam 
craft had been sailing the Delaware some time before Morey's 
experiments began, but there was no competition or inter- 
course between them. They were working in different 
fields, and on different lines. Both were remarkable char- 
acters, but with few qualities in common except that of 
inventive genius. Morey was a farmer, a man of affairs, 
and a speculator in scientific matters. Fitch was an 
artisan, possessed of much mechanical ingenuity. Lea^ang 



Steamboats and Steamboating 327 

his home in the Valley at twenty-five, and pushing west- 
ward, he employed his talents in various pursuits before 
making his essays in steamboat construction. He had 
been a joiuneyman watchmaker in New Jersey ; a gun- 
smith for the American forces during a part of the Revo- 
lution ; an itinerant vendor of watches and clocks, and a 
deputy surveyor for Virginia. 

When Fitch conceived his great idea, which came sud- 
denly to him, as he afterward related, he was " ignorant 
altogether that a steam-engine had ever been invented," 
and "• the propelling of a boat by steam was as new as the 
rowing of a boat by angels." That was in the spring of 
1785. During the following summer he succeeded in 
fashioning a rude engine in a blacksmith shop with the help 
of the workmen there ; and by autumn he had completed 
drawings and models of a steamboat which he presented 
to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. 
The next year his first crude boat was on the Dela- 
ware. Upon its showing and his declarations he then se- 
emed from New Jersey the exclusive right for fourteen 
years of constructing and using all kinds of water-craft 
" impelled by the force of fire or steam," on all the navi- 
gable waters of that state. The next year similar rights 
were obtained from the states of New York, Delaware, 
Pennsylvania, and Virginia. These fvirther franchises 
were secured probably upon the exhibition of his second 
and more perfected boat, the trial trip of which in August 
of that year was witnessed by members of the convention 
for framing the Federal Constitution, then in session 
in Philadelphia, and other public men. This boat was 
forty-five feet long, twelve feet beam, with an engine of 
twelve-inch cylinder, and six oars, or paddles, on each side. 
Raising funds through the sale of a map of the Northwest 



328 Connecticut River 

Territory, which he drew and engraved himself, and in- 
teresting a few men of means in the hazard of a stock 
company, he now proceeded to build a larger boat and of dif- 
ferent pattern. This was sixty feet long, eight feet beam, 
and had paddles at the stern. Its trial trip was on a nm 
of twenty miles. The best time made was only three miles 
an hour, and the performance discouraged the stockholders. 
After a while, however, they rallied, and Fitch produced 
another boat, encouragingly named " The Perseverance." 
Although an improvement on its predecessor, its average 
rim per hour was only ten minutes better. So the " Perse- 
verance " was also pronounced unsatisfactory. Immedi- 
ately Fitch set to work upon the construction of a boat 
with larger machinery. This took the water in April, 
1790, and great was the joy of the indomitable inventor 
when it displayed a speed of eight miles an hom-! "Thus 
has been effected by little John Fitch and Harry Voight," 
he exclaims, "one of the greatest and most useful arts 
that has ever been introduced into the world ; and although 
the world and my country do not thank me for it, yet it 
gives me heartfelt satisfaction." The principle upon which 
this boat worked lay in the application of the cranks to 
twelve oars, suspended perpendicularly from an elevated 
frame, and making a stroke upon the water similar to the 
paddle of a canoe. Diuing the summer of 1790 it was 
run as a regular passenger boat between Philadelphia and 
Burlington. 

Fitch now felt assured of success, and after obtaining 
a United States patent he planned a boat large enough to 
carry freight, with the intention of sending it to New 
Orleans for navigation on the Mississippi. But when the 
machinery was nearly completed a storm broke the boat 
from its moorings and drove it on an island. This was a 



Steamboats and Steamboating 329 

final blow to the stock company. The stockholders refused 
to put out more money ; and since the inventor's own 
resources were exhausted, the enterprise had to be aban- 
doned. A few years later Fitch was in France, at the 
solicitation of Aaron Vail, a former stockholder, and at 
that time United States consul at L'Orient, who believed 
that Fitch's steamboat could be profitably introduced 
abroad. But it was the time of the French Revolution, 
and the requisite pecuniary aid could not be obtained. 
Then leaving his papers and specifications with Mr. Vail 
(which Fulton when later in France making his studies 
was permitted to examine), Fitch went to London, whence 
he returned to America, working his passage as a common 
sailor. Coming back to his birthplace in the Valley he 
made his home for a while with his kindred at East Wind- 
sor. Still intent upon his invention, he soon contrived a 
rude steamboat out of a ship's yawl moved by a screw 
propeller, which was given a trial in New York on the old 
"Collect" (the large pond where is now the "Tombs") 
with Chancellor Livingston, the patron of Fulton, among 
those on board. Next drifting to Bardston^ Kentucky, 
his last attempt was in the model of a steamboat only 
three feet long sailed on a neighboring stream. Then in 
the summer of 1796, worn and wearied with misfortune 
and hardship, he died by his own hand in the village 
tavern. He left a bundle of papers in a sealed packet to 
the Franklin Library of Philadelphia, to be opened thirty 
years after his death. They were found to include a 
memoir together with a detailed account of his experi- 
ments. From these documents the story of his work has 
been drawn. 

Morey's experiments were begun in 1790, the year of 
Fitch's highest achievement. For a decade before Morey 



330 Connecticut River 

had devoted much time to experiments on light and heat, 
and in studies connected with mechanics. His aim now 
was to improve the steam-engine, particularly for applica- 
tion to propelling boats by means of paddle-wheels. The 
result of his efforts was an engine and machinery of his 
own construction set in a tiny boat large enough only for 
himself and a single companion. When all was completed 
the trial trip was made up and down the River between 
Orford and Fairlee. This took place on a summer Sunday 
in 1792 or 1793, while the people were at meeting, to 
avoid notice. The boat was run for some miles up the 
River against the current to a point near the present 
bridge between the two towns, and down again to lower 
Orford, working successfully in all its parts. After some 
improvements in the machinery, and several more satis- 
factory trips over the same course, astonishing to the peo- 
ple, the invention was considered sufficiently matured for 
exhibition to the outside world. 

Accordingly Captain Morey took the model to New 
York and there built a new boat to demonstrate his prin- 
ciple. During three successive summers he tried many 
experiments in modifying the engine, and in propelling. 
He had frequent interviews with Livingston and Fulton, 
and freely explained his mechanism, in which they became 
much interested. Called back to his home by domestic 
affairs, the boat was brought to Hartford, as a more con- 
venient place for working, and here he ran her on the 
River in the presence of many persons. Having at Orford 
made sundry improvements in his engine, he returned 
to New York and applied the power to a wheel in the 
stern. By this means the boat was propelled at the rate 
of about five miles an hour. A trip was made to Green- 
wich, on the Sound, and back, Avith the brothers Livingston 



Steamboats and Steamboating 331 

and others then interested in steamboating as passengers, 
all of whom expressed " very great satisfaction at her per- 
formance and with the engine." But greater speed was 
desired, and under the encouragement of Chancellor Liv- 
ingston, and the promise of a considerable sum, provided 
he should succeed in making a boat run eight miles an 
hour, — the speed attained by Fitch's boat in 1790 — 
Morey continued his exertions through the following sum- 
mer. Going to Bordentown on the Delaware in June, 
1797, he there devised the plan of propelling by means of 
two wheels, one on either side, and accomplished his object. 
This plan comprised the shaft running across the boat with 
a crank in the middle worked from the beam of the engine 
Avith a "shackle bar," — the same mode in principle as 
that afterward used in the large boats put on the Hudson. 
Morey's boat thus equipped was " openly exhibited in 
Philadelphia." " From that time," to quote directly from a 
statement of Morey's made in 1818, of which the foregoing 
is a summary, " I considered every obstacle removed, and 
no difficulty remaining or impediment existing to the 
construction of steamboats on a large scale, and I took 
out patents for my improvements. The notoriety of these 
successful experiments enabled me to make very advan- 
tageous arrangements with Dr. AUison [the Rev. Burgess 
Allison, one of the chaplains of the lower house of Con- 
gress] and others, to carry steamboats into effectual opera- 
tion ; but a series of misfortunes to him and others concerned 
soon after deprived them of the means of prosecuting the 
design, defeated their purpose, and disappointed my expec- 
tations. But I did not wholly relinquish the pursuit, from 
time to time devising improvements in the engine." 

Morey felt keenly the loss of the honor and the emolu- 
ments of his invention, and believed to the end of his life 



332 Connecticut River 

.that he had been unjustly deprived of them. He never 
had any doubt but that he had a right to take out a patent 
for the application of two wheels to a steamboat (which 
antedated Fulton's patent by several years). At " much 
labor and expense and the employment of years devoted to 
the pursuit," he wrote, he had " actually succeeded, so that 
nothing was wanting to carry this mode of navigation into 
effect but pecuniary means " ; and it seemed to him " pecu- 
liarly hard " that " the originator of these improvements 
by which Messrs. Livingston and Fulton were enabled 
principally to succeed, should have had his right over- 
looked and himself excluded from the very waters [Ne'w 
York] where many of his experiments were made." 

Happily, however, these slights of fortune did not 
embitter Morey's latter years. He continued the genial 
philosopher and practical student of useful arts. Sketches 
by reminiscent contemporaries present him a fine figure of 
a man. " He was a size larger than Daniel Webster," says 
one. " He loved sports and was ahead of all, whether in 
hunting, ball-playing, or any of the sports of the day." 
He could shoot a deer on the full run, and hawks on the 
wing. He was philanthropic, generous, just-minded, " ten- 
der-hearted and humane." " His frown would frighten 
any man, but his smile was peace." A pleasing picture, 
is it not, of old-time stalwart manhood, full roimded ? 
But the long Valley abounded in such characters. Morey's 
father, Colonel, later General Israel Morey, a founder of 
Orford, and a leader in the College Party in the " Play for 
a State," as has been seen, was of the same type. 

Captain Morey spent the last seven years of his life in 
Fairlee, and died there in 1843. It has long been a tradi- 
tion in the village that his original boat was simk in 
Fairlee Pond (now Morey Lake and a favorite little sum- 




be 
C 



-a 



-a 



Steamboats and Steamboating 333 



o 



mer resort) ; but all efforts have failed to discover any 
trace of it. The most systematic search was made some 
years ago by a committee of the New Hampshire Anti- 
quarian Society. The conclusion expressed by an Orford 
friend of Morey, — Dr. Willard Hosford, his physician, — 
that the original boat was " worked up for firewood," and 
that the traditions concerning it have clustered about a 
later boat built by him which is known to have been filled 
with stones and sunk in this pond, was apparently accepted 
by this committee. 

The first steamboats in regular service were put on the 
lower River, in or about 1824, to ply between Hartford 
and New York, with various landings below Hartford. 
These were the " Oliver EUswortb." named for the cele- 
brated Connecticut jvirist, born in Windsor, and the " Mac- 
donough," for Captain Thomas Macdonough, the " hero of 
Champlain " in the War of 1812, who, after winning his 
laitrels, had lived in Middletown. Both were commodious 
boats for that time, with berths (staterooms were a luxury 
of a later day) for sixty passengers. For navigation 
above tide-water the first steamer made her debut in 1826. 
She was the '• Barnet," so called felicitously, as her 
sponsors felt, in their confidence that she would success- 
fully reach the ultima thule of the River's commerce at 
Barnet, Vermont. 

The story of the "Bamet's" efforts and of the gallant 
dashes for the unattainable of those which came after her, 
in which the mettle of the Valley men of action was per- 
sistently exhibited against most untoward conditions, con- 
stitutes another animated and picturesque chapter in the 
closed history of up-river navigation. 

The " Barnet " was a venture of the Comiecticut River 



334 Connecticut River 

Company primarily to demonstrate the feasibility of steam 
navigation in the upper waters, and so influence legislation 
that the company were seeking. She was hastily built, at 
New York, and equipped only sufficiently for her special 
purpose. She was of the " wheelbarrow " pattern, with 
an extreme length of seventy-five feet, and a width of 
fourteen and a half feet ; and her draft in the water was 
less than two feet. The " Macdonough " towed her from 
New York through the Soiuid, and she reached Hartford 
at the close of November. A week later, imdeterred by 
the lateness of the season, she was started on her up-river 
voyage for distant Barnet, with a " barge " in tow con- 
taining ofiicers of the company and their guests. 

Great was the interest of the people who gathered on 
the banks to witness her departure. As she gallantly 
steamed toward Warehouse Point fusillades of musketry 
greeted her from both sides of the River. The noise of 
the exhaust steam from her engine was heard a great dis- 
tance off. All went well till the Enfield rapids were 
struck. Here wind and tide, and a heavily laden flatboat 
coming down stream, presented a combination of obstacles 
which she could not overcome, and she was brought to a 
standstill. So she returned with her company ingloriously 
to Hartford. 

A day or two after, however, when her machinery had 
been strengthened, a second start was made with the same 
company. This time the falls were successfully passed, 
thirty fallsmen assisting, poling from scows lashed on each 
side of the steamer. Then she moved on to Longmeadow 
and Springfield at " a good rate." At Springfield she was 
welcomed with " true neighborly kindness." The populace 
thronged to the landing, leaving the streets deserted. In 
the court of common pleas a lawyer was arguing a cause 



Steamboats and Steamboating 335 

before well filled chairs when word came of her arrival. 
Instantly the court-room cleared of all save judge, jvu-y, 
speaker, and opposing counsel. Salutes were fired, the 
town bells were rung, and the " Barnet's " party were 
entertained over night with joyous hospitality. The next 
morning the voyage was resumed, and the boat ascended 
the River with increased speed. At Willimansett Falls 
the enthusiastic people drew her over these rapids. The 
next day she passed easily through the South Hadley 
canal. At Northampton a "thousand persons," "many 
of whom had never before seen a steamboat," were assem- 
bled on the then new bridge and the adjoining banks. As 
she steamed up to the town a flag was hoisted on the bridge, 
salutes were fired, and the people wildly huzzahed. That 
night she remained at Northampton, while her company 
were given a public supper at the tavern, and congratu- 
latory speech was exchanged. At the close of the follow- 
ing day the mouth of the Deerfield was reached, and here 
a tiu-n was made into that river for a run up to " Cheap- 
side," in Deerfield. At the turn the citizens of Montague, 
assembled on the Connecticut's bank near the bridge, fired 
a salute, which the " Barnet " returned. As she neared 
Cheapside landing the people of Deerfield gave her thirteen 
guns, to which she responded with double the niunber. 
Sunday was spent at Cheapside. On Monday the voyage 
was continued. Greenfield was passed, and Northfield 
and Brattleborough, with demonstrations at each place. 
At length Bellows Falls was reached amid more cannon- 
firing and peal of bells. It was recorded with pride that 
from Northampton up to this point the advance, against 
a strong northwest wind, had been at the rate of five miles 
an hour, except when passing the rapids ! After exhibit- 
ing her powers in the eddy at the foot of the rapids, to the 



336 Connecticut River 

admiration of the assembled people on either shore, she 
ran gaily into the lower lock of the canal. Here a com- 
mittee of the villagers formally received her company with 
warm speech of welcome, to which as fervid response was 
made. Then company and hosts marched up to the Man- 
sion House, a fine country inn, and there, joined by other 
choice men of the village and neighl^oring towns, "sat 
down to an elegant dinner." Toasts followed the repast, 
the announcement of each accompanied by the roar of 
cannon. The crowning toast was to " The town of Barnet : 
May she speedily be gratified by the sight of her first- 
born." 

But this felicity never was hers. For the triumphal 
voyage ended at Bellows Falls, the little craft being too 
wide to pass through the locks here. The return trip was 
made in a leisurely way, and back at Hartford the com- 
pletion of the cruise was celebrated with a grand supper 
at John Morgan's Coffee House and more toasts and 
speeches. Then the " Barnet " was laid up for the winter. 
And so ended her brief active life. She sailed no more, 
and at length was broken to pieces. 

The " Blanchard " and the " Vermont " were the " Bar- 
net's " successors. These were stauncher craft, and high 
hopes were entertained of their performances. Both were 
built on the River, — at Springfield ; and their builder, 
Thomas Blanchard, was an ingenious Springfield me- 
chanic, then employed in the United States arsenal. The 
" Blanchard " was launched in the summer of 1828 ; the 
" Vermont " in May the following year. The " Blanchard " 
was a side-wheeler, and could carry sixty or more passen- 
gers. Although she could run the Enfield rapids under 
favorable conditions, she was practically little better than 
the " Barnet " to overcome them. She did not venture far 




[.|ft. Il ■ / ' 'li . it U I 







■5 









a 




Steamboats and Steamboating 337 

up river. The " Vermont " was constructed on a different 
plan. She was seventy-live feet long, fifteen wide, and 
drew only one foot of water ; while her wheel was astern 
far enough to work in the dead water. After displaying 
her powers in several trips between Springfield and Hart- 
ford, she set out with a hundred passengers for the up-river 
goal. 

The voyage occupied the season between August and 
October. Like the "Barnet" her progress was marked 
by enthusiastic demonstrations on shore, the discharge of 
cannon, the ringing of bells, with joyous receptions at 
the various stopping-places. She passed the limit of the 
"Barnet's" voyage easily in October, going comfortably 
through the Bellows Falls locks. Thence she steamed up 
to Windsor, and later on to the locks of Water-Queeche. 
But farther she could not go. The same insurmoimtable 
obstacles here confronted her that the " Barnet " had met 
below. These locks were too narrow for her. So this second 
attempt failed of full success. The " Vermont " returned 
to Windsor, and in November made the voyage down 
stream, arriving below in season to participate in the cele- 
bration of the completed Enfield canal. For a brief season 
she was run between Bellows Falls and Windsor. Subse- 
quently she was put into regular service on a Springfield 
and Hartford line, in company with the " Blanchard." 
Then arose a lively competition between these steamboats 
and the stage lines rimning on each side of the River. 

Another little Springfield-built steamer, constructed for 
the pvupose, made the third attempt to reach Barnet from 
Hartford. This was the " Ledyard," named for John 
Ledyard, the famous Connecticut-born traveller, who in 
1770, when a student at Dartmouth, astonished the Valley 
with his voyage from Hanover to Hartford in a canoe 



338 Connecticut River 

which he had fashioned from a great tree. The " Led- 
yard " venture was made in the summer following that of 
the " Vermont." Under the skilful handling of her cap- 
tain, Samuel Nutt, a successful boat-builder of White River 
Junction, she advanced as far as Wells River village. Thus 
she was the next to cover the course of Captain Morey's 
pioneer steamer between Orford and Fairlee forty years 
before. This victorious passage beyond the bounds of her 
predecessors inspired a song of triumph from a local poet, 
culminating in these choice lines : 

" 'Tis gone, 'tis gone, the day is past 
And night's dark shade is o'er us cast ; 
And further, further, further still 
The steamboat 's winding through the vale, 
The cannon roar o'er hill, through dale. 
Hail to the day when Captain Nutt 
Sailed up the fair Connecticut ! " 

But here, within ten miles of the goal, the " Ledyard " 
came to grief. She stranded on a bar just above the 
mouth of the Ammonoosuc. A long rope was hitched to 
her, and a line of lusty river-men and others, wading in 
the stream, tugged hard to haul her over. But to no pm-- 
pose. So this adventure ended. The " Ledyard " retm-ned 
to Springfield and became employed in the less ambitious 
service of tugging freight boats in the Massachusetts 
Reach. 

The scheme of relays of steamboats to cover the dis- 
tance from Hartford to Wells River in sections between 
the canals, as advised by the Windsor convention of 1830, 
now matured. " The Connecticut River Valley Steam 
Boat Company " put on a fleet of light-draft boats, each 
built in the section which it was to cover. Three were 
assigned to the sections below Tm-ner's Falls. The '' WU- 




'Ujm 




■(i„)',(v 






>:t( 






Steamboats and Steamboating 339 

liam Holmes " was built at Bellows Falls forthe run between 
Turner's Falls and that point ; the " David Porter," at 
Hartland, Vermont, to ply between Bellows Falls and the 
Sumner's Falls locks ; and the " Adam Duncan " at White 
River Junction, to cover the upper section. They were 
simple affairs, costing to build and equip less than five 
thousand dollars each. The scheme proved disastrous 
after a single season of operation. The first year closed 
with a balance against the company, and assessment on 
the shares. The following year the company failed. The 
" William Holmes " was operated for a year or two longer 
between Bellows Falls and Charlestown, with occasional 
excursions farther north, but without profit. At length 
she was stripped of her machinery and her hull cast on 
the River's bank. There it lay rotting for a number of 
years, and finally disappeared, carried away by a freshet. 
The "Adam Duncan" met her fate on her second trip. 
This was a Fourth-of-July excursion to Hanover. Dm-ing 
the passage the connecting pipe between the boilers burst, 
causing the steam and water to escape. One of the pas- 
sengers jumped overboard and was drowned. The boat was 
hauled ashore, stripped of her machinery, and abandoned. 
With the melancholy failure of this enterprise, up-river 
steamboating came to an end. Thereafter the service, 
except for freight boats, was confined to the Massachusetts 
Reach, till it was superseded by the railway: then to 
below the head of tide-water. The line between Spring- 
field and Hartford and intermediary points flourished till 
the opening of the railroad between these two cities in 
1844, when its career ended. Dm-ing its period of greatest 
activity several steamers were added to its " fleet," in patr 
tern superior to the original "Blanchard " and " Vermont." 
There were the " Massachusetts," with her deck-cabin and 



340 Connecticut River 

double engine, the most complete steamboat that had yet 
been seen on the River above Hartford ; and the " James 
Dwight," the " Agawam," the " Phoenix," the "Franklin," 
all in high favor for one excellence or another. 

But crude and primitive they yet were, and so they 
appeared to the travelled eye. It was the " Massachusetts" 
that Dickens, making the passage in February, 1842, 
drolly describes in those American Notes which vibrated 
so harshly on the then sensitive national nerves : 

" I omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have 
been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, 
might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted 
with common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These 
windows had bright-red curtains, too, hung on a slack string across 
the lower panes ; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian 
public-house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water 
accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this 
chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get 
on anywhere in America without a rocking-chair. I am afraid to 
tell how many feet short this vessel was, or how many feet narrow ; 
to apply the words length and width to such measurements would 
be a contradiction in terms. But I may say that we all kept the 
middle of the deck lest the boat should unexpectedly tip over ; 
and that the machinery by some surprising process of condensation, 
worked between it and the keel : the whole forming a warm sandwich, 
about three feet thick." 

Slight as was their draught, these little steamers often 
encountered difficulties in their runs. It was not uncom- 
mon to resort to extraneous aid in shoal places. " I have 
often seen Captain Peck, of the ' Agawam,' " says one 
narrator of reminiscences, '" when the water was exceed- 
ingly low, step over into the River at Scantic bar, and 
with a lever lift up the boat and carry her over the sand 
into deeper water beyond." 




O 



2h 
OJ 



O 



O 
g 



O 



.^-_„:a 



Steamboats and Steamboating 341 

When the Springfield and Hartford service was aban- 
doned this "fleet" had become reduced to four steamers. 
One of them was sold and taken to Philadelphia, the others 
went to Maine and were put on the Kennebec. The 
" Blanchard " had become a freight towing boat some 
time before. The " Massachusetts " had been burned in 
1843 at her wharf m Hartford. The freight towing 
business continued to thrive for some years longer, with 
regular daily service between Hartford and Springfield, 
Northampton, South Hadley, and Greenfield; and up- 
river, as freight offered, to Brattleborough and Windsor, 
Vermont. 

Below, from Hartford, steam propellers remained longer 
in service. These craft first appeared on the River in 
1844. They superseded the earlier packets fitted for both 
passengers and freight, which sailed between the same 
ports, notably New York and Boston. The packets were 
generally fine vessels. Those of the Hartford and Boston 
line, established after the close of the War of 1812, con- 
sisting of topsail schooners, with cabins handsomely fin- 
ished, are described as especially fine. Gradually the 
propellers were superseded or transformed into tugs for 
towing freight-barges, sometimes in strings. 

The head of all navigation is now Holyoke, the work 
of United States engineers in improving the channel making 
it possible for boats drawing four or five feet to pass above 
Springfield. But the steamboat service ends at Hartford, 
and is confined to the " Hartford Line," evolved from the 
pioneer establishment of 1824, plying down-river to the 
Sound and New York. 



Ill 

TOPOGRAPHY OF EIVER AND 
VALLEY 



343 



I 



XXIV 

"The Beautiful River" 

Winding down its Luxurious Valley 360 Miles to tlie Sea — Almost a Continuous 
Succession of Delightful Scenery — The River's Highland Fountains — The 
four Upper Connecticut Lakes — Topography of the Valley — The bound- 
ing Summits — The River's Tributaries — Historic Streams entering from 
Each Side — The Terrace System — Charming Intervals with deep-spreading 
Meadows — The Panorama in Detail from the Headwaters to Long Island 
Sound — Fossil Footprints of the Lower Valley. 

" f I "IHIS stream may perhaps -with more propriety than 
I any other in the world be named the Beautiful 
Eiver. From Stuart to the Sound it uniformly maintains 
this character. The purity, salubrity, and sweetness of 
its waters ; the frequency and elegance of its meanders ; 
its absolute freedom from all aquatic vegetables ; the un- 
common and imiversal beauty of its banks, here a smooth 
and winding beach, there covered with rich verdure, now 
fringed with bushes, now covered with lofty trees, and now 
formed by the intruding hill, the rude bluff, and the 
shaggy mountain, — are objects which no traveller can 
thoroughly describe, and no reader can adequately imag- 
ine." " Beauty of landscape is an eminent characteristic " 
of the great Valley through whicli the River flows. " I 
am persuaded that no other tract within the United States 
of the same extent can be compared to it with respect to 
those objects which arrest the eye of the painter and the 
poet. There are indeed dull, uninteresting spots in consid- 
erable numbers. These, however, are little more than the 
discords which are generally regarded as necessary to per- 
fect the harmony. The beauty and grandeur are here more 

345 



346 Connecticut River 

varied than elsewhere. They return oftener; they are 
longer continued." 

So wrote Timothy Dwight in his Travels in Neio 
England,'' of the Connecticut River, the greatest of New 
England streams, a century ago. His picture with mod- 
ern touches delineates " The Beautiful River " to-day. 

Springing from a mountain pool and highland rivulets 
on the ridge of the great Appalachian chain which sepa- 
rates the waters of New England and Canada, the Connec- 
ticut winds and curves and bows its gracious way, with 
here a dashing fall and there a sweep of rapids, down its 
long, luxurious Valley, through four states, three himdred 
and sixty miles to the sea. River and Valley in their great 
sweep from the headwaters to Long Island Sound, though 
changed in aspect through the building up of towns and 
cities along the way, and the intrusion of other practical 
but not always aesthetic works of man, constitute " almost 
a continuous succession of delightful scenery " now as in 
President Dwight's time. The predominating beauty of 
the River is sweet and winsome, rather than proud and 
majestic. It has its grand moods, but these are brilliant 
flashes which serve to enhance the exquisiteness of its 
gentler mien. The Valley's charm is found in the fre- 
quency and magnitude of the fertile meadows or intervals, 
— intervales of common speech, — off-spreading from the 
River's sides ; the procession of splendid terraces rising be- 
tween intervening glens ; and the continuous mountain 
frame, comprised in the irregular outline of trap and sand- 
stone ranges on either side, interrupted only by the entrance 
of tributary streams. 

Erom its mountain fastnesses the River "loiters down 
like a great lord," as Dr. Holmes has imaged, '' swallowing 
up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, 






r^ 




a 




1-3 


> 


+j 


5 


.y 






OJ 






u 






t~i 


<u 



</i u 






I 



' ' The Beautiful River ' ' 347 

until it gets proud and swollen, and wantons in huge lirs- 
urious oxbows . . . and at last overflows the oldest inhabi- 
tants, rimning in profligate freshets ... all along the 
lower shores." In its downward course it flows between 
New Hampshire and Vermont to their southern bounds; 
crosses the length of Massachusetts between the " heart of 
the Commonwealth" and the beautiful Berkshire region: 
and passes on the eastern side of Connecticut state to the 
finish. 

The Valley's bounding summits on the east are the 
mountain area of the Appalachian system which extends 
through New Hampshire, embracing the White Mountain 
range, and passes in the spurs and ridges of that range 
through Massachusetts and Connecticut toward Long 
Island Soimd ; and on the west, the extension of the 
Appalachian system through Vermont in the Green Moun- 
tains — their eastern chain continuing in the Berkshire 
Hills and the lesser highlands of Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut. Between these primary ranges on either side the 
Valley expands and contracts, varying greatly in breadth 
in its sweep from north to south from less than twenty 
miles to upward of fifty. 

In its passage between the upper states the River drains 
about three-tenths of the area of New Hampshire, and 
four-tenths of Vermont, or a total of sixty-eight hundred 
square miles in both states. Twenty or more tributaries 
come to it from the bounding summits in New Hampshire, 
and a dozen from the Vermont side. On the outer sides 
of these summits rise other rivers of historic interest from 
their use in connection with the Connecticut as waterways 
and trails between Canada and New England during the 
French and Indian wars. At the north, on the Canadian 
side of the highland where our River rises, is the source of 



348 Connecticut River 

the St. Francis River, which crosses to the St. Lawrence. 
On the northwest, in upper Vermont, the Clyde rises in 
the Green Mountains and meets the St. Francis through 
Lake Memphremagog. Two miles from the Clyde is the 
head of the Nulhegan, which flows to the Connecticut. 
Joined by a carr3ring place these two streams formed the 
connecting link of an early canoe-way for predatory incur- 
sions from Canada through this River upon the New 
England frontier then far below. South of Lake Mem- 
phremagog rises the Barton River, which, with a carry to 
the Passumpsic, that empties into the Connecticut thirty 
miles below, constituted a link in another trail by way of 
that lake. Farther down on the west slopes of the Green 
Mountains heads the romantic Winooski, — so named by 
the Indians from the growth of wild onions on its banks, 
— more commonly the Indian River in colony times, which 
formed a trail between Lake Champlain and ovu- River, 
through the White River, most frequented in the French 
and Indian wars. Faiiher south rises Otter Creek, also 
flowing to Lake Champlain, the longest stream in Vermont, 
which constituted the early " Indian Road " connecting 
with the Connecticut by way of Black River at the present 
town of Springfield, Vermont, or by the West River, lower 
down, at Brattleborough. 

The foimtain-head of " The Beautiful River " is hidden 
in the primeval forest, in a remote and solitary region, at 
the extreme northern point of New Hampshire, near the 
top of the mountain ridge that marks the Canadian line. 
It is a mountain pond, or miniatiu-e lake, of only a few 
square acres, lying less than eighty feet below the summit 
of the elevation known as Mount Prospect, and twenty-five 
hundred and fifty-one feet above the sea. Surrounded by 



' ' The Beautiful River ' ' 349 

dense growths of evergreen, the region is rarely penetrated. 
" Almost the only sound that relieves the monotony of the 
place/* says Joshua H. Huntington in the Geology of New 
Hamjishire, " is the croaking of the frogs ; and this must 
be their paradise." This pool is the uppermost of four 
basins which constitute the River's headwaters, and bears 
the prosaic name of Fourth Lake. Its outlet is a silvery 
rill, tumbling along the mountain-side, and flowing down 
to a second lake haK a mile directly south of the Canadian 
bound. This lake lies at a height of twenty hundred and 
thirty-eight feet. In prosaic fashion also it is denominated 
Third Lake — or sometimes Sophy Lake. It is a lake in 
fact, with an area of three-quarters of a square mile, set 
in the heart of the mountain forest. On all sides except 
the south, where is its greatest width, the hills rise almost 
from its shore. Beside the growth of spruce, firs, and 
cedar of immense size about it, Professor Huntington 
remarks its subalpine vegetation. From its outlet, at the 
southeast corner, the highland stream, now of somewhat 
larger growth, flows southward to the next basin, Second 
Lake, six and a half miles below. On its way, five miles 
or so from Third Lake, the growing stream receives a tribu- 
tary from the east, also rising near the Canadian boundary, 
nearly as large as itself. Second Lake, a romantic piece 
of water, two and three-quarters miles in length, and at 
its widest a little more than a mile, with shores of graceful 
contour, deserves a happier name. Its height above the 
sea is eighteen hundred and eighty-two feet. Near its 
northern border it receives, besides our highland stream, two 
tributaries, coming one from the noilheast, the other from 
the northwest. Its forest-framed outlet is on the southwest 
side. Thence our stream proceeds southwesterly four miles 
to the fourth basin. First or Connecticut Lake, increasing 



350 Connecticut River 

in beauty as it goes. Twenty rods down from Second 
Lake the young River drops in a little fall of eighteen 
feet. Then it descends gradually for a while with here 
and there deep eddies. Then it grows more rapid, and 
then for half a mile it dashes between precipitous rocky 
walls in a series of wild cascades. Then it moves on with 
gentler flow. Then again with swifter cinrent, and with 
added volume from two tributary brooks coming down 
from north and west, it enters the basin. 

Connecticut Lake, chief of the River's headwaters, lies 
sixteen hundred and eighteen feet above sea-level. Pic- 
turesquely irregular in outline, its shores in large part with 
forest fringes broken by green intervals, it is a handsome 
lake of fine proportions, as becomes a progenitor of so 
fair a stream. It extends fom* miles in length, has a 
breadth at its widest of two and three-quarters miles, and 
contains nearly three square miles. The neighboring hills 
are thick with deciduous trees, particularly the maple 
mingled with the spruce and fir. In the autmnn, while 
the trees are aglow with their rich tints, the heights are 
often white from the frozen mist that clings to the spears 
of the evergreen foliage ; and so a rare picture is presented, 
embracing, as Professor Huntington limns it, the blue 
waters of the lake, the belt of deciduous forests with their 
gorgeous colors, the dark bands of the evergreens, and the 
snow-white summits. From the shape of Connecticut Lake 
Timothy D wight called it "Heart Lake." But his name 
did not hold. More poetical and yet more fitting were it 
called " Metallak," so perpetuating the name of the last of 
the Abenaquis, " the final hunter of the Coo-ash-ankes over 
the territory of his fathers," in which it lies. 

Now full formed the River emerges from the rocky 
outlet of this limpid basin, falling abruptly about thirty- 



" The Beautiful River " 351 

seven feet. For the first two and a half miles of its course 
it is almost a continual rapid, averaging perhaps ten rods 
in breadth. Then it drops into a more tranquil mood and 
glides gently along for some f oiu- miles, winding west and 
southwest. Then, and with a sweeping bend in the upper 
part of the township of Stewartstown (the Stuart of Timo- 
thy Dwight's writing), receiving along the way two fair- 
sized tributaries and lesser streams, it flows again more 
rapidly to the meeting of the bounds of New Hampshu-e, 
Vermont, and Canada. Here, joined by another tributary, 
Hall's Stream, which comes down from the north and 
makes the west bound of New Hampshire and Canada, it 
swings into its long serpentine course, separating New 
Hampshire and Vermont, southward, through romantic 
country. 

From Connecticut Lake to the meeting of the bounds, 
or, more exactly, to the mouth of Hall's Stream, at Canaan, 
Vermont, a distance of about eighteen miles, its descent 
is set down as five hundred and eighty-three feet. Accord- 
ingly at this point its height above the sea is ten hundred 
and thirty-five feet. Thence the drop becomes very gradual 
for fifty miles, to the point where the upper section of the 
Upper Valley ends — at the head of the Fifteen Miles Falls, 
in Dalton, New Hampshire side, — the descent being only 
two hundred and five feet in all. 

Following the River's downward course from source to 
mouth the terrace system distinguishing its banks is of 
first interest. These formations of modified drift, shaped 
during the formative geological period by action or con- 
traction of the River and incoming tributaries, occur in 
spaces or "• basins " separated by ridges, through which 
the River has cut or deepened gorges, or connected by the 



352 Connecticut River 

highest terraces. The terraces rise from the River in suc- 
cessive magnificent steps, three, four, five, and sometimes 
more in number : the lower consisting of the rich alluvial 
meadows or intervals ; the highest being, as the geologists 
define, remnants of ancient flood-plains annually overflowed 
by the glacial river at the end of the Champlain period, as 
are the alluvial meadows now, and varying in height to 
two hundred feet above the River's present surface. 

Dr. Edward Hitchcock, the third president of Amherst 
College, and first of all geologists to explore the River 
scientifically, enumerated twenty-two of these terrace- 
basins from the headwaters to the Soimd. 

We cannot do better than follow his lines in a rajjid 
survey through their course of the features of the River 
and the Valley. 

Five " basins " are defined in the upper section of the 
Upper Valley. Along this entire reach, below West Stew- 
artstown and Canaan, the fertile intervals extend on both 
sides, varying from a half-mile to a mile or more in width. 
The terraces in the first basin are most developed at the 
end, in West Stewartstown, and opposite in Canaan. In 
the narrower second basin, extending only about five 
miles (to Leamington, Vermont side, and Colebrook, New 
Hampshire side) some terraces appear of unusual height. 
At Leamington, Vermont's Monadnock, extending to the 
River, uplifts its green crown. In the third basin, also 
short (from Colebrook to Columbia, or Bloomfield, Ver- 
mont side), two tributaries, the Mohawk River and Sims's 
Stream, enter the River from New Hampshire. The fourth 
basin (from Bloomfield to Guildhall, Vermont, and North- 
umberland, New Hampshire), with a length of eighteen 
miles, exhibits a beautiful succession of terraces, particu- 
larly fine at Guildhall. Near the northern bound of this 



" The Beautiful River " 353 

basin, the Niilhegan River, part of the uppermost Indian 
route to Canada, comes in from Vermont at a point below 
the town of Brimswick ; and at the south end of the l^asin, 
the Upper Ammonoosuc, from the New Hampshu-e side, 
at Northumberland. The fifth basin, another short one 
(Guildhall to Lunenburg, Vermont, and Lancaster, New 
Hampshire), advances into the old Coos country, so called 
by the Indians from the crookedness of the River passing 
through : the " Garden of New England," as characterized 
by Major Robert Rogers, with a soldier's eye for beauty, 
when he penetrated the then primitive region with his 
Rangers in the French and Indian war times. Lunenburg 
and Lancaster on then- terraced banks are approached 
through broad meadows, the channel at length widening 
and gliding with a placid surface. In its meanderings by 
Lancaster the River's drop is said to be less than two feet 
in a flow of some ten miles. As illustrative of its twist- 
iugs in this lovely reach, the local historian tells how in 
hunting days a sportsman might, at one point, " stand in 
New Hampshire, fire across Vennont, and lodge his ball in 
New Hampshire again." On the Lancaster line, Israel's 
River, rising in cataracts in the White Moimtains, empties 
into the stream ; and at Dalton, just below Lancaster, is 
Israel's companion, John's River, having started from the 
mountain town of Jefferson, through which Israel's also 
flows : both named for old-time hunters, Israel and John 
Glines, brothers, each of whom had a hunting-camp on 
them. 

South of Lancaster the base of the White Mountains 
pushes the channel twenty miles westward. The Gardner 
Mountains range, crossing the Valley, and occupying the 
angle of the bend at Dalton, makes the Fifteen-Miles Falls, 
over twenty miles in length. These rapids, beginning at 



354 Connecticut River 

Dalton in a great eddy, continue through the long romantic 
passage excavated by the River, to Monroe, New Hamp- 
shire side, and Barnet, Vermont, finishing at Barnet in a 
pitch of a few feet, known as Mclndoe's Falls, from a 
Scotch lumberman established here among the earliest 
settlers in the region. From the head of the rapids, or 
from the mouth of John's River, the descent is rapid, three 
hundred and seventy feet in twenty miles. The altitude 
of the foot of Mclndoe's Falls above the sea is four hund- 
red and thirty-two feet. 

The Fifteen-Miles Falls, heading the lower section of 
the Upper Valley in New Hampshire and Vermont, occupy 
the sixth and seventh of Dr. Hitchcock's basina. From 
their foot this section of the Valley is comparatively level, 
and again with a southerly course. About a mile below 
Mclndoe's Falls the Passumpsic River empties into the 
stream from its picturesque run down the Vermont hills. 
From the mouth of the Passumpsic to the Massachusetts 
line, a direct distance of one hundred and eighteen miles, 
our River's flow is one hundred and thirty-seven miles, 
with an average descent of two feet to the mile. The 
Fifteen-MUes Falls separate the old Coos country into the 
Upper and Lower Coos. 

Below Mclndoe's Falls the hills recede and the broad 
alluvial meadows again intervene and form the particular 
features of the eighth basin, which extends from Mclndoe's 
Falls to South Ryegate, Vermont side. In the succeeding 
five basins (Ryegate to Norwich, Vermont, and Hanover, 
New Hampshire) a succession of intervals, rising terraces, 
and mountain views delight the eye. These basins com- 
prise a distance of about thirty miles. The terraces are 
especially marked in the upper part, at Newbm-y and 
Bradford, Vermont, and Haverhill, New Hampshire ; and 



' ' The Beautiful River " 355 

at the lower end in Hanover, providing Dartmouth College 
with a beautiful seat. The most extensive intervals are 
between Newbury, Vermont, and Haverhill, New Hamp- 
shire side, and between Bradford, Vermont, and Piermont, 
New Hampshire, — the region of the Lower Coos. Within 
this reach they are at greater breadth than at any other 
point in the Valley. At Newbury Wells River enters the 
stream ; at Bradford, Wait's River ; and just above Haver- 
hill (from Bath), the Lower Ammonoosuc : all important 
tributaries. Between the mouths of Wells and Wait's 
Rivers the intervals spread from half a mile to a mile in 
width, the River twisting through them in Haverhill and 
Newbm-y in little and great oxbows. East of HaverhiU, 
Moosilauk, the southwest extension of the White Mountains, 
towers four thousand seven hundred and ninety feet above 
the River. The hills back of Haverhill rising in procession 
to this rugged peak appear in full view from the opposite 
banks of Newbury. Midway between Haverhill and Han- 
over, Mount Cuba, in Orford, trending toward the River, 
with an altitude of two thousand nine hundred and twenty- 
seven feet above the sea, enriches the landscape. 

Features more varied characterize the fourteenth basin, 
which extends from Norwich to Mount Ascutney, in Weth- 
ersfield, Vermont, the highest elevation lying wholly in 
the VaUey. Between Hanover and the railroad centre of 
White River Jimction are the Upper White-River Falls, at 
"Wilder's," splendid as a spectacle and practical as the 
motive-power for great paper-mills, transforming wood 
pulp into newspaper stock. At White River Junction the 
White River, the largest stream in Vermont on the east 
side of the mountains, produces as it enters some inter- 
esting terraces. At Lebanon, on the New Hampshire 
side, the Mascomy River comes in; and below, from the 



356 Connecticut River 

Vermont side, the Quechee, or Otto Quechee, at North 
Hartland : both contributing to the Quechee or Sumner 
Falls, two miles down from its mouth. Terraces beautify 
the banks of Lebanon and North Hartland, and of Cornish 
and Windsor on either side below. The triple-crowned 
Ascutney finishing this basin, sweeps close to the River, a 
graceful cone, independent of any range, and rising three 
thousand one hundred and sixty-eight feet above the sea. 
From near its top down quite to its base three deep valleys 
course, in size resembling one another, whence comes its 
Indian name, which signifies " three brothers." The next 
two basins, extending between Ascutney and Bellows Falls, 
about twenty-five miles, show terraces in fullest form at 
the upper part, most notably in Wethersfield, the little 
village south of Ascutney's base, North Charlestown, New 
Hampshire side, and Springfield, Vermont. Four tribu- 
taries enter in these reaches ; Sugar River, at Claremont, 
and Little Sugar, at North Charlestown, from New Hamp- 
shire ; and Black River at Springfield and Williams River 
at Rockingham, from Vermont, — the latter the historic 
junction where, three miles above Bellows Falls, the " Deer- 
field captives" of 1703-4 held their first Sunday service; 
in commemoration of which the river was afterward named 
for John Williams, the minister. 

At Bellows Falls the aspect changes and the loitering 
stream becomes a foaming torrent in a narrow strait. Here 
Kilburn Peak, rising abruptly twelve hundred feet and 
pressing close on the east side, and steep hills crowding in 
on the west side, bound this gorge, through which the 
River, not more than forty rods in width, hiu-ries in whirl- 
ing rapids with spirit and dash. Entering with a plunge 
at the brink over a ledge of gneiss which cuts the current 
into two channels, it rushes and leaps in zigzags to a grand 




V'mm 



:^^ 









s 



pq 



o 
■a 



o 



' ' The Beautiful River ' ' 357 

finish in a great eddy nearly fifty feet below. It is an 
animated spectacle indeed, but scarcely meeting the exu- 
berant description of Samuel Peters, the romancing histo- 
rian of Connecticut, a hundred and more years ago, who 
told of the tops of the bounding hills " intercepting the 
clouds," and of the water consolidated by pressure and 
swiftness " between the pinching rocks to such a degree of 
induration that an iron bar cannot be forced into it " ! The 
village of Bellows Falls perched on " the island " and 
the steep west banks, its terraces among the highest in the 
Valley, adds to the charm of the surrounding landscape. 
The blemishes in the picture, from an testhetic point of 
view, are the factories crowding on the River's edge below 
the gorge. These, however, are endurable blemishes, for 
they bring emplo3Tiient, comfort, and wealth to this favored 
town. The first bridge that ever spanned the River was 
built here. This great feat was accomplished in 1785, 
and gave added distinction to the place. 

In the next basin, extending to Brattleborough, seven- 
teen miles, the River resumes its tranquil flow. In this 
reach terraces are beautifully developed along the first five 
miles of Westminster, adjoining Bellows Falls. From the 
Westminster side Saxton's River enters the winding stream; 
and at Walpole, opposite. Cold River, after flowmg around 
Kilburn Peak. The intervals here broadening on both 
sides give these rural towns a lovely river fringe. As 
Brattleborough is approached the Valley again narrows till 
it becomes almost a defile, and at this elevated terraced 
town the River passes through another gorge. This strait 
is made by the closing in of the precipitous Wantastiquet 
Mountain, thirteen hundred and sixty feet high, on the 
New Hampshire side, and of the westrside hills culminat- 
ing in the crest of the Green Mountains. Toward either 



358 Connecticut River 

end of the village, north and south, two tributaries join 
the River but a mile apart, thus producing some remark- 
able and complicated terraces. These tributaries are West 
River, of considerable size, and Whetstone Brook, a brawl- 
ing stream, both in picturesque setting. Attractive ter- 
races also appear north of Wantastiquet, on the New 
Hampshire side, in Chesterfield opposite Brattleborough 
and Dummerston. Far across the Valley, twenty miles 
off on the eastern bound, grand Mouadnock, in the charm- 
ing hill town of Dublin, is discerned rising in majestic 
isolation to its altitude of more than three thousand feet. 

The eighteenth basin, beginning at Brattleborough, 
extends past the remainder of New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont and penetrates Massachusetts for twenty miles or so. 
Terraces reappear numerously in the northern part of 
Vernon, the lowest Vermont town ; and along Hinsdale, 
the New Hampshire town opposite Vernon. At Hinsdale 
the Ashuelot, the last New Hampshire tributary, enters 
the River with a royal sweep, having cut its narrow chan- 
nel through mountain ranges. To the mouth of the Ash- 
uelot, within four miles of the Massachusetts line, our 
River has coursed from its source two hundred and eight 
miles, with a descent from Connecticut Lake of fourteen 
hundred and twelve feet. At this point the River lies two 
hundred and six feet above the ocean level. Its whole 
length in New Hampshire, following its principal bends, 
is in round figures two hundred and thirty-six miles, the 
distance in the dii-ect course being two hundred and one 
miles. 

At the Massachusetts line the primary mountains crowd 
down, again narrowing the Valley. Across this state the 
Valley's stretch from north to south is nearly fiftj^ miles, 
with a varying but averaging width of about twenty miles. 




3 






cn jw>?v',;.fiiij:nv. ■ ^•■^i.xi. 



' ' The Beautiful River ' ' 359 

It broadens toward the south and narrows at the southern 
end as at the north, between close-pressing hills. 

The River enters Massachusetts meandering in long 
graceful curves through the border town of Northfield, the 
east-side village rising from the meadows in broad terraces, 
a picture of quiet beauty as seen in the summer sunshine 
from the car windows of a railroad train on the opposite 
bank. The eighteenth basin continues a few miles farther 
down, ending at the mouth of Miller's River, the first 
Massachusetts tributary, which flows into the stream in 
the southeast corner of the west-side town of Gill. West- 
ward of this basin, rising in high ridges between Gill and 
the adjoining town of Greenfield, a range of greenstone 
appears, which, trending southward, enters the Valley and 
extends along its central parts through Massachusetts, 
twice crossing the River; and thence continuing in the 
chain that, lower down, cuts across the State of Connecti- 
cut and terminates in West Rock, at New Haven. This 
interior mountain range, with the River's magnificent 
curves and superb ox-bows and frequent meanders between 
deep meadows and terraced banks, diversifies the scenery 
and giA^es to much of the Valley in Massachusetts a charm 
of its own distinct from the beauties of other parts. 

Through this region, extending from Northfield across 
the two states to New Haven, where the River had its 
earlier outlet in the Soimd, lie the '' new red sandstone " 
formations in which were found, some sixty years ago, 
between the strata of the bed, those marvellous fossil foot- 
prints of ancient bipeds, the discussion of which by savants 
of that time gave a great new zest to geological research 
in the Valley. Ages back, they say, before the globe was 
fit for man, these strange creatiu-es roamed the shores of 
the estuary which then was here, and left their impress in 



360 Connecticut River 

the mud clay, the rock in its plastic state, on the slopes 
and shallow bottom when the tide was out. So Dr. Hitch- 
cock, first to examine scientifically and describe these 
triassic tracks, recorded. Huge birds were they, as he 
portrayed, four times as large as the African ostrich. They 
reached in height twelve feet and more, in weight four 
hundred to eight hundred pounds, and had a stride of from 
thirty to sixty inches. With them were other gigantic 
races, for the high temperature which then prevailed was 
seemingly favorable to a giant-like development of every 
form of life. The footprints, thousands of which Dr. 
Hitchcock examined, were found in the bottom of the 
Valley in places scattered between Gill, in Massachu- 
setts, and Middletowu, in Connecticut, a linear distance of 
about eighty miles. Dr. Hitchcock's theoiy was that the 
colossal birds passed over the surface in flocks, as indicated 
by rows of tracks found in certain localities, among them 
the southeast part of Northampton. Farther research dis- 
closed traces of quadrupeds, frogs, and salamanders. From 
all these footprints Dr. Hitchcock constructed this animated 
spectacle of the menagerie of the primeval Valley : 

" Now I have seen in scientific vision an apterous bird some 
twelve or fifteen feet high — -very large flocks of them, — walking 
over its muddy surface followed by many others of an analogous 
character, but of smaller size. Next comes a biped animal, a bird, 
perhaps, with a foot and heel nearly two feet long. Then a host of 
lesser bipeds, formed on the same general type ; and among them 
several quadrupeds with disproportioned feet, yet many of them 
stilted high, while others are crawling along the surface with sprawl- 
ing limbs. Next succeeds the huge Polemarch, leading along a tribe 
of lesser followers, with heels of great length, and armed with spurs. 
But the greatest wonder of all comes in the shape of a biped batra- 
chian with feet twenty inches long. We have heard of the Labj-- 
rinthodon of Eurojie, — a frog as large as an ox, but his feet were 




O 

O 



P 



c 



o 



^ 






' ' The Beautiful River " 36 1 

only six or eight inches long, — a mere pigmy compared with the 
Otozoum of New England. Behind them there trips along, on 
unequal feet, a group of small lizards and Salamandridaj, with trifid 
or quadtrifid feet. Beyond, half seen amid the darkness, there move 
along animals so strange that they can hardly be brought within 
the types of existing organizations. Strange indeed is the menagerie 
of remote sandstone days ; and the privilege of gazing upon it, and 
of bringing into view one lost form after another, has been an ample 
recompense for my efforts though they should be rewarded by no 
other fruit." 

" No doubt," afterward remarked the later New England 
geologist, Professor Charles W. Hitchcock, Dr. Hitchcock's 
son, in his Geology of Neio Hampshire, the wonderful birds 
who left these marks " built their nests among the jimgles 
of New Hampshire, from whence they emerged in search of 
food." 

The nineteenth basin extends from the Miller's River 
junction in Gill to the conical peak of Mount Toby, or 
Mattawampe, in Sunderland, east side, in which the inte- 
rior range reappears at its first crossing of the River. At 
the beginning of this reach of only eight or ten miles the 
River's course is sharply turned to the northwest. Thus 
it runs for about a mile between pictruesque banks. Then 
bending westerly it flows in that direction for two miles, 
through a " horse race " and " the narrows," Gill lying on 
the north and the town of Montague on the south. In 
the narrows it tiu-ns again abruptly northward. After a 
mile or so in rapids it plunges over a rocky precipice at 
Turner's Falls. Then making a great semi-circle, or bow, 
of three miles in extent, it resumes its southward way, and 
so approaches the basin's end. Along this roving course 
numerous terraces appear on either side, some of consider- 
able extent. Greenfield on its hills lies on the north and 
west of the great bow. At the upper bend Falls River, 



362 Connecticut River 

coursing down the side of Greenfield from the north, enters 
the stream. Next south of Greenfield beautiful Deerfield 
lies, back of a deep strip of meadow extending the town's 
full length, while the symmetrical stretch of Deerfield 
Mountains continues the interior range from the Gill and 
Greenfield ridges. At the town's north end Deerfield River 
empties into our stream, having come down from the Green 
Mountains and the Berkshire Hills through its own rich 
valley, bringing along with it Green River from Greenfield, 
which it receives near its mouth. At the south end, or in 
South Deerfield, the bluff Sugarloaf peaks, in which the 
Deerfield chain culminates, stand out boldly, with Mount 
Toby looming high on the opposite side of the River. 

In the twentieth basin the Valley widens, and here the 
striking characteristics of the terraces are their width. 
Along the plains and over the rising banks spread on either 
side the historic towns of Hadley and Hatfield ; Amherst 
back of Hadley, and Northampton, the " Meadow City," 
fan- seats of colleges. Opposite Northampton, in South 
Hadley, the River circling through the splendid gorge be- 
tween. Mount Holyoke lifts its graceful front. Here the 
interior range makes its second crossing, and attains its 
highest elevation in Mount Tom, on the Northampton side, 
eleven hundred and twenty feet above the sea. Thence 
the slopes of this range, called in this part the Holyoke 
range, trend southward with the River's course to the 
lower Massachusetts line. At Northampton, Mill River, a 
pretty feature of the rural city, joins the stream. 

The twenty-first is the longest of all the basins, its ex- 
tent being fifty-three miles through the remainder of 
Massachusetts and across Connecticut state to Middletown, 
with a varying width of from three to ten miles. In the 
Massachusetts part the River has an average width of 







I J Lit 




" The Beautiful River " 363 

twelve hundred feet, and expands to the greatest breadth 
before the Connecticut state line is met. All along this 
reach the terrace system is finely developed, although the 
terraces do not average high. The highest reach is the 
gorge terrace south of Mount Holyoke, two hundred and 
ninety-eight feet above the sea. Below Mount Holyoke 
South Hadley Falls break the River's course. On the west 
side lies the busy mill city of Holyoke, with its remark- 
able hydraulic works. On the east side again, below South 
Hadley, Chicopee, also a city of mills, occupies the River's 
banks. Just above the city the Chicopee River with its 
branches, — bringing the waters of Swift, Ware and Qua- 
boag rivers from the eastward, — contributes to our stream 
by several mouths. Next below, the city of Springfield 
rises on a succession of terraces. Here another Mill River 
enters the stream, on its downward course furnishing 
water-power for the United States arsenal, and passing 
through lower portions of the city. On the opposite bank 
is West Springfield, with the Agawam or Westfield River, 
flowing down from the Berkshires, emptying into our river 
by two mouths. Next appear the rm-al towns of Agawam 
on the west, and Longmeadow on the east, both extending 
to the Connecticut State line. From either side several 
picturesque brooks drop into the River along the way. 
The most important of these, Pecowsic and Longmeadow 
Brooks, enter respectively at the north and the south parts 
of Longmeadow township. 

At Springfield the River has descended to a point only 
forty feet above the sea-level. Here and from Holyoke 
above it has become of sufficient depth to float vessels of 
considerable size. At Longmeadow it has its greatest 
width, for a mile or more expanding to twenty-one hund- 
red feet from bank to bank. 



364 Connecticut River 

Crossing the Connecticut State line the Enfield Dam is 
soon reached. Thence the course is through the Enfield 
Rapids for five and a quarter miles, over a rocky bed, in 
parts between bluff banks, to Windsor Locks. Part way 
down King's Island, its west side a rock bluff, divides the 
channel. Opposite Windsor Locks, on the east side, is 
Warehouse Point, the landmark of earliest colonial times, 
which happily has retained its old name. Below Windsor 
Locks lies " ancient Windsor," now in three towns on 
either side of the River. At East Windsor the Scantic 
River joins oiu* stream ; at South Windsor, Stoughton's 
Brook and Podunk River ; and at Old Windsor, the 
Tunxis, or Farmington River, the latter, the principal 
tributary in this state, having its rise on the east slope of 
the Green Mountains, and approaching its mouth through 
the Talcott range, part of the Valley's west bounding sum- 
mits in this region. Over the plains and hills next below 
old Windsor spreads the " Charter City " of Hartford, with 
the tall yellow dome of the State Capitol high above the 
mass of roofs, glistening in the sun. Here Park River, 
the " Little River ' ' of earlier days, contributes to the stream. 
Opposite, on the east side, lies East Hartford, connected 
by a bridge with the parent city. 

In the reach, ten miles in length, from the foot of En- 
field Rapids to Hartford, the River has run with slight 
curvatiu-es directly south, averaging fifteen hundred feet 
in width, through intervals from a third of a mile to a 
mile wide, which are overflowed in seasons of freshets. 
Below Hartford the com-se becomes more irregular. Here 
the changes in the River's bed, constantly going on through 
the wearing of the alluvial banks on the bends, are especially 
marked. Along by old Wethersfield the River is said now 
to flow diagonally across the bed it had two centuries ago, 



" The Beautiful River " 365 

through the shifting of the clay and sand forming its banks 
from one part of a bend to another ; an island of more 
than a mile in length that then divided the channel having 
completely disappeared in the process. In another section, 
six miles below Hartford, the same authority (Charles L. 
Burdette in the Memorial History of Hartford County) 
states that in a quite recent period, within twelve years of 
his writing (1885), the River was moved its whole width 
to the eastward. Between Old Wethersfield and Glaston- 
bury, on the east side, great bends are now made in the 
crooked course. At South Glastonbury Roaring Brook 
drops into the stream. From the south end of Wethers- 
field the course resumes the southward direction and con- 
tinues between fertile intervals close backed by hills, 
alongside the towns of Rocky Hill and Cromwell on the 
west, and Portland, with its quarries, on the east. Then 
another sharp turn is made, and the stream swings with a 
long sweep southwestward to Middletown, receiving in 
this generous bend another tributary, Sabethe River, from 
the west. 

The last basin, from Middletown to the Sound, extends, 
by the River's winding way, about thirty-eight miles. At 
Middletown the River is half a mile in width, winding yet 
in " delightful prospects," as Timothy D wight found it. 
Below Middletown the primary mountains again close in, 
making a deep ravine through which, with occasional small 
openings of meadows, the River courses, eastward, south, 
and southwestward, to its finish. From the bend in which 
Middletown lies the run is directly east for about five miles. 
In this reach the River makes the " Straits," a narrow pass 
through high ranges, of about a mile in length, in which 
the stream is contracted to a breadth in places of but forty 
rods. Below, at Middle Haddam, a sharp turn is taken 



366 Connecticut River 

southward. So the course continues for about three and 
a half miles, when another bend is made eastward, between 
Haddam on one side and East Haddam on the other. At 
East Haddam, Salmon River, the last tributary of note, 
enters from the hills in a little cataract. From East Had- 
dam the course takes a generally southeastward direction, 
with numerous windings, to the Sound. Along the way, 
in the upper parts between hilly banks sloping downward 
to the River, old towns of historic flavor are passed on 
either side. Between Essex and Old Lyme the channel 
broadens perceptibly ; and again at the mouth by Old 
Say brook. 

The entrance to the Sound is marked picturesquely as 
well as practically by a dazzling white lighthouse on Say- 
brook Point, and another at the end of a jetty from the 
same west side. 




o 



o 



XXV 

Along the Upper Valley 

The Romantic Region about the Connecticut Lakes — Pioneer Upper Settle- 
ments — Story of a Forest State of the Eighteen-Twenties and Thirties — 
At the Valley's Head — Upper Coos Towns — Old Trail from Canada to 
Maine — The Country of the Fifteen Miles Falls — Lower Coos Towns — 
About the Great and Little Ox-Bows — Dartmouth College and its Sur- 
roundings — Between White River Junction and Old "Number 4" — 
Historic Towns of the Lower Reaches to the Massachusetts Line. 

FROM the " witness monument " on the elevated plateau 
of the " Great Divide " that marks the boundary be- 
tween the United States and Canada, all the territory lying 
between the New Hampshire-Maine line on the east, marked 
by Mount Carmel (3,700 feet) lifting a shapely head, and 
the New Hampshire-Canada line on the west, made by Hall's 
Stream, and extending southerly to the first great bend 
of the Connecticut, constitutes the township of Pittsbm-g, 
a generous area of three hundred and sixty square miles. 
Sections of considerable size are splendid woodland, a par- 
adise of hunter and sportsman, not yet all spoiled by the 
wide-sweeping operations of the lumbering concerns which 
control large tracts of it. Streams and ponds aboimd 
enticing to the fisherman and angler^ In the settled parts 
are roomy farms, while about the Connecticut lakes are 
favorite summer camping places. The lower lake is the 
chief of the popular resorts with the pleasant inn of Metal- 
lak Lodge on the north shore. The lovely intervals on the 
River's sides begin with the Valley about two miles below 
the lower lake, and thence their green breadths continue 
for some five miles as the stream flows. Again below 

367 



368 Connecticut River 

Beecher's Falls in Canaan, on the Vermont-Canada bound, 
and West Stewartstown opposite, they sweep luxuriantly. 
For the leisurely explorer of the country of the River's 
headwaters, West Stewartstown station is the proper stop- 
ping-place on the railroad which comes up the River banks 
along the New Hampshire side. Here the rural Pittsburg 
stage is in waiting to cover the remaining eighteen miles 
to Connecticut Lake. But the ideal way to make this 
part of the journey is behind a pair of those gay little 
Morgan horses which Vermonters breed so successfully. 
And with such a team the start should be made from the 
Canaan house in Canaan, a friendly inn with a sportsman- 
like flavor, on the terrace above the bridge from West 
Stewartstown. 

Pittsburg was the original " Indian Stream Territory " 
which has a record as an independent republic as late as 
the eighteen-thirties. The region was a magnificent Indian 
hunting-ground and lay unexplored till 1787, when a party 
of Canadian surveyors penetrated it. Shortly after it was 
drawn into the limits of New Hampshire by a survey of 
1789. Then two former Rangers journeyed up to it from 
the Lower Coos on a prospecting trip.^ They came upon 
the broad intervals at the mouth of Indian Stream late in 
September when the bordering woods in autumn ripeness 
were flaming with gorgeous hues, and were enraptured. 
After a month of hunting and trapping in the game-filled 
forests, they returned bearing rich spoil and flattering 
reports. The next summer, joined by a few others, they 
came up again to attempt a settlement ; and " pitches " 
were made on the meadows. As winter approached, how- 
ever, all went back to the Lower Coos. Thereafter only 
hunting parties roamed the country till about 1796, when 




o 

<U 
en 

3 

O 

X 



c 
o 

h-1 



Along the Upper Valley 369 

the permanent settlement was promoted by other Valley- 
townsmen who had obtained a deed of the whole territory 
from a local Indian chief — an up-country King Philip. 

At that time the region was in dispute, and many 
regarded it as a sort of terra incognita wholly outside of 
the jurisdiction of either New Hampshu-e or Canada. In 
the wake of the permanent settlers came troubled debtors 
and persons of easy morals who sought the remote district 
untrammeled by awkward laws as an asylum from pressing 
creditors or from punishment for crime. But the settlers 
themselves were of worthy stock. They cleared large 
farms up the River's sides and on the north of Connecticut 
Lake ; built comfortable homes ; and reared great families. 
Despite the mixed character of the community, affairs 
moved tranquilly for the first thirty years without any 
fixed system of local government, a mild form of vigilance 
committee law sufficing for the treatment of flagrant 
offences against the common peace. Then disorganizing 
features developed and the need of a local government of 
some sort for mutual protection became apparent; and 
accordingly, in the spring of 1829, the independent state 
was set up as " The United Inhabitants of the Indian 
Stream Territory." It was a imique political establish- 
ment, one of the smallest and most democratic in history. 
The " Centre School-House " was sufficient for the assembly 
of all the people at its inauguration. At the outset the 
"United Inhabitants" asserted their independence of both 
the United States and Great Britain. The frame of gov- 
ernment comprehended three departments, representative, 
executive, and judicial. The representative department 
comprised the entire voting population, each member 
directly representing his own interests. The executive 
department was termed the " supreme council," and con- 



370 Connecticut River 

sisted of five persons, to be chosen annually. The judicial 
department was composed of justices of the peace elected 
by the people in their municipal capacity. The supreme 
council constituted a court of last appeal. Trial by jury 
was provided, the jury to consist of six persons. A code 
of laws was adopted at the first meeting of the legislative 
branch. A military company of forty men was formed i 
for protection against ''foreign invasion" and domestic 
violence. 

This forest state with its novel government continued 
in fair working order for about five years. Then it fell to 
pieces. With no jail it could only resort to punishment 
by fine or by banishment. It lost the power to enforce 
the execution of its laws. Finally " treason crept in " and 
its destruction was complete. This was in 1835. Chaos 
followed. The people divided into two opposing parties, 
one invoking the protection of New Hampshire, the other 
of Canada. New Hampshire assumed a quasi jurisdiction 
over the territory by sending officers into it to serve pro- 
cesses issued by her com-ts. The Canada party resisted 
them. The sheriff of CoiJs County came up and appointed 
a resident deputy sheriff. At the same time he gave assur- 
ances of the protection of New Hampshire to a.11 who were 
loyal to her, warning all others of the " consequences of 
treasonable acts." Shortly after a county magistrate of 
Lower Canada appeared with promises of the protection 
of Great Britain to all favoring Canadian jurisdiction, and 
with the added advice to the Canada party to resist the 
" encroachments " of the New Hampshire authorities. Sev- 
eral of the Canada party fortified their houses and armed 
themselves. Soon the gage was thrown down and war 
opened. 

It was a short and decisive campaign of a single fight. 




to 
o 






M 



Along the Upper Valley 371 

On a certain crisp October morning the New Hampshire 
deputy sheriff awoke to find his house surrounded by a 
company of armed men from Canada headed by a Canadian 
sheriff, together with a band of the local Canada party. 
The deputy was seized on a Canadian warrant and hurried 
off on foot toward Canada. News of the capture was 
quickly spread to the River towns below. By noon a 
hundred or more mounted men had collected from the 
lower border towns, Clarksville, Stewartstown, Canaan, 
and Colebrook, variously armed with implements of war- 
fare ranging from miurderous farm tools to the regulation 
weapons of the militia. Inunediately the improvised army 
started in hot pursuit. The invaders were overhauled a 
mile beyond the Canada line, and there fought. The 
skirmish, in which a few were hurt but none was kUled, 
ended with the rescue of the prisoner and the inglorious 
rout of his captors. The rescued deputy was brought 
back to the safe haven of the country store at Canaan, 
and then the " army " quietly melted away. Subsequently 
the militia of the border towns were called to the assistance 
of the Coos County sheriff, but no further outbreak occurred. 
Peace came with the final establishment of the jurisdiction 
of New Hampshire. The more aggressive of the Canada 
party moved over the border, and those who remained 
accepted the situation philosophically. In 1840 the "Indian 
Stream Territory " disappeared from the map, and Pitts- 
burg, with sixty ratable polls, took its place. The town 
of to-day has a permanent population of less than seven 
hundred. 

Now lumbering and agriculture are the principal indus- 
tries of this pleasant region. The Connecticut lakes and 
the three west-side waterways, — Perry's, Indian, and 
Hall's Streams, — are the chief reservoirs for the masses 



372 Connecticut River 

of logs harvested west of the lakes which go down in the 
annual " drives " to the various paper and lumber mills 
below along the River's length into the Massachusetts 
Reach. Millions of feet of liunber are driven down each 
year, and logging gangs of hundreds of hardy men work 
in the woods in winter and on the drives in the spring. 

Clarksville, next below Pittsburg, on the River's first 
great bend, occupies the extensive " Dartmouth College 
Grant," made to the college by the New Hampshire Leg- 
islature in 1789. Its fertile river-side lands and fringing 
forests lay unbroken, except by a single settler, till as late 
as 1820, when two or three Dartmouth students ventured 
a speculation with a purchase of ten thousand acres of the 
grant. When the settlement was incorporated, in the 
fifties, it took the name of Benjamin Clark, the college 
men's leader, a direct descendant from the Plymouth Clarks 
of the " Mayflower." It is a community now of a few 
hundred inhabitants, given to agriculture and lumbering. 

Stewartstown and Canaan are closely related, not only 
by the bridge which has long connected them, but histor- 
ically and socially. The pioneer settlers of both were from 
the same towns down the Valley, and neighborly interests 
were maintained from the start. The grantees, however, 
were of different stock. Stewartstown and the two east- 
side township.s next below, Colebrook and Columbia, were 
originally grants made by Governor John Wentworth, in 
1770, to a company of Englishmen composed of Sir John 
Colebrook, Sir James Cockburn, and John Stewarts of 
London, and John Nelson, of New Grenada ; Canaan, with 
her neighbors Leamington and Bloomfield (first Mine- 
head), were earlier granted by Governor Benning Went- 
worth, to New Englanders. Stewartstown was named for 
Mr. Stewarts ; Colebrook was given Sir John's name ; 



Along the Upper VaUey 373 

and Columbia was Cockburn Town till 1811, for Sir James. 
The honor of having some of their names thus perpetuated 
was all that the English patentees got out of these grants. 
None of the lot was settled till several years after the 
Revolution. They are pleasant towns now, cultivating 
fertile farms, excellent dairies, and some manuf actinres ; 
and with outlying parts rich in attractions to the sports- 
man. Canaan is most interesting as a place of great fine 
stock-farms. All cultivate the " summer resort " trade, 
and cultivate it handsomely. 

As the Valley proceeds below Stewartstown and Canaan 
on its luxiu-ious way down between the two states, Ver- 
mont's Monadnock in Leamington and Bowback in Stratr- 
ford, flanked by the more eastward cones of Stratford's 
Percy Peaks, enrich the landscape. To Bowback is added 
the distinction of being the highest mountain in all the 
Valley immediately adjoining the River, except Ascutney 
ninety miles farther down. 

Stratford, with Brunswick and Maidstone, opposite, 
marks the northern extremity of the rich Coos region as 
the pioneers knew it. Thence it sweeps down the Valley 
in unbroken beauty through its stretch of a hundred miles. 
That part between these north towns and the Fifteen-Miles 
Falls is now, as then, in the nomenclature of the Valley, 
the Upper Coos ; the reach from the head of these singing 
rapids to Lebanon and Hartford next below the seat of 
Dartmouth, is still the Lower Coos. Wells River Junction 
is the gateway for the traveller to the Upper section, and 
White River Junction to the Lower portions of this lovely 
mountain-hedged " Garden of New England." 

Of the Upper Coos, Stratford, Northumberland, and 



374 Connecticut River 

Maidstone were the outposts of the Valley in the Revolu- 
tion. At Stratford was the foremost of the three outer 
forts, the other two being at Northumberland. Through 
Maidstone passed the old Indian Trail from the Canada 
camps of the St. Francis tribes to the Penobscots in Maine, 
which was still used in the Revolution. This trail enter- 
ing the Valley by the Nulhegan River and meeting the 
Connecticut at Brunswick, came down through the settled 
part of Maidstone, and here taking the River struck the 
opposite bank at Northumberland, whence the Upper 
Ammonoosuc was followed to the eastward. Parts of 
this old trail and bits of the landmarks of the Revolution 
are yet indicated to the interested visitor by local antiqua- 
rians. Stratford was settled principally from the Con- 
necticut Stratford on Long Island Sound, and given that 
town's name a year or two before the Revolution. Maid- 
stone and Brunswick were also grants to Connecticut men, 
but were eventually settled from Massachusetts. They are 
small rural communities with pleasant villages. Northum- 
berland is the oldest of this group, dating from 1762. 
Some of their scenery is wild, and all is beautiful. Those 
on the New Hampshire side are lumber manufacturing 
places. All invite an increasing summer population. 

In Lancaster and in Guildhall and Lunenburg on the 
Vermont side are f omid rare combinations of scenic charms. 
Crossed by Israel's River at its fall to the Connecticut, 
with great intervals bordering both rivers, with terraces 
sloping gradually up to low-browed hills, and the whole 
completely encircled by mountains, Lancaster's natmal 
features are exceptional even in this l^eautiful region. Add 
to these attractions of situation the neat town itseK, its 
broad streets shaded by elms, some of which were set out 
by early settlers gifted with an unusual eye for beauty 







o 

O 



hJ 



Along the Upper Valley 375 

united with utility, and the engaging picture is complete. 
The principal part^ of the town lies back on the first terrace 
above the Connecticut's deep intervals. The encircling 
mountain scenery, in view from the village, or seen to 
greater advantage from the easily accessible Mount Pleasant, 
one of its three hills, embraces the range of the White 
Mountains ; the Percy Peaks in Stratford, with the other 
northwest heights, in earlier days called the " land pilot 
hills " because of their service in guiding cross-country 
hiintersto the Connecticut ; westward the Green Mountains ; 
and in the near neighborhood, the Limenbiu-g range. 

Lancaster occupies the "Upper Coos Meadows," upon 
the richness of which Rogers's Rangers dwelt so elo- 
quently in their accounts of the north Valley country. 
The first-comers, about 1763, were an imcommon band of 
strong characters. At their head was the promoter, David 
Page, from Petersham, earlier of Lancaster in Massachu- 
setts. His lieutenants were two stalwart young men, also 
from Petersham, Emmons Stockwell and Edwards Buck- 
nam, both in their early twenties, who had previously 
roamed the country, one as a ranger in Rogers's company, 
the other as a hunter. The others were David Page's son 
and his daughter Ruth, a girl of eighteen, the only woman 
in the band, and a few heads of families from the Massa- 
chusetts Lancaster and Lunenburg. Stockwell and the 
younger Page came up ahead to take possession of the 
grant. Blazing a track through the forest all the way 
from Haverhill, forty miles below, for the guidance of 
those who were to follow, they arrived in the autumn and 
subsisted through the winter on hunting and fishing. The 
site of their '' pitch " is yet shown in an old cellar-hole. 
In the spring "Governor" Page arrived with the rest, 
and a drove of twenty head of cattle. Before a year 



376 Connecticut River 

had passed Emmons Stockwell and Ruth Page made a 
pre-wedding journey of fifty miles down the Valley on 
horseback to find a minister to solemnize their marriage. 
Later Edwards Bucknam married Page's other daughter, 
Susanna. The Stockwells and the Bucknams for years 
led in the material and social progress of the settlement, 
and both reared large families, the Stockwells fifteen 
children, the Bucknams ten. Ruth Stockwell was the 
perfected woman pioneer. She was '' a woman of action, 
full of courage and hope." She could handle a gun as 
easily as a broom, was a good shot as well as a good cook, 
more than once bringing down her bear. Lancaster has 
long been a shire town, and a highly cultivated community. 
The fine influences of the days when the old Lancaster 
Academy was at the height of its prosperity still remain, 
while the busy mills give the town importance as a manu- 
facturing centre. 

Lunenburg and Guildhall were begun at the same time 
as Lancaster, the first comers and their followers making 
clearings on both sides of the River. The intervals were 
then heavily wooded and millions of feet of magnificent 
pine timber were rolled into the river to get rid of it. 
Splendid material also for masts for the king's navy was 
here, but none apparently was reserved for this purpose 
as the town charters required. At all events his Majesty 
never got any of it. The settlers must have fared well 
despite their remoteness from bases of supplies. The 
woods were rich in game, and the River teemed with 
salmon. At the head of the Fifteen-Miles Falls, south of 
Lancaster, salmon, some weighing forty pounds, were easily 
caught at night with torch and spear. Lunenberg and 
Guildhill are now fruitful agricultural towns, with well 
tilled farms and rich creameries. 




bO 

"o 
U 



o 



M 



V 
BO 

"o 
U 



Along the Upper Valley 377 

The rapids of the Fifteen-Miles Falls through their 
long gradual descent, as the River flows, of nearer thirty 
miles from the start in the " great eddy " to the finish in 
the romantic " pitch," should be followed along the river 
roads by carriage, or on horseback as the pioneers followed 
them. The railroad here winds away from the River to ac- 
commodate the town-centres which lie back over the hills. 
From Lancaster, starting at the Lancaster House on " The 
Street," it is a long summer afternoon's drive or ride 
through enchanting country. The objective point should 
be on the Vermont side at East Baruet, where, below the 
"pitch," the Passumpsic enters, and the River, again 
widening, is dotted by the "seven islands" to which at 
low water twice seven and more are added, hindering the 
great log drives coming down stream, and taxing the skill 
of the loggers in their passage. Downward from Lancaster 
the river roads on both the New Hampshire and the Ver- 
mont sides run for the greater part close beside the rapids ; 
sometimes crossing an interval fringed with trees and bush, 
sometimes cutting into small woods through which the 
tumbling waters sparkle and sing, and constantly in a pan- 
orama of varying beauty. On the New Hampshire side 
the way lies through South Lancaster, Dalton with the 
Dalton mountains rising eastward, and Littleton with 
the range of low Littleton hills, to a lower village where the 
River is crossed by the bridge to Lower Waterford. On 
the Vermont side, crossing from Lancaster by the South 
Lancaster bridge, it passes through rural parts of South 
Lunenberg and Concord to the succession of Waterford 
villages. Through the Waterfords to East Barnet the up- 
land is taken and then the lower plain, with the River in 
constant view, and across it the procession of hills, the 
Gardner range back of Monroe (named for Parson 



378 Connecticut River 

Gardner, one of the grantees of Bath in which they rise), 
and the distant White Mountains. At East Barnet the 
raihroad again comes to the River's side, and follows it 
down to Wells River Junction and below. 

Barnet, its dream of a busy mart at the head of steam- 
boat navigation long past, enjoys now a life of serenity in 
the profitable culture of dairy farms, some maple-sugar 
making, and some prosperous mauufactiu-es. From its 
situation at the turn of the River southward again and at 
the junction of two tributaries, each making a picturesque 
approach, the villages of the township look out from their 
terraces upon a succession of expansive views. The town- 
ship has its historic landmark in Round Island at the 
mouth of the Passumpsic in East Barnet, supposed to be 
the place to which the provisions were brought up from 
" Number 4 " for the relief of Rogers's Rangers on their re- 
turn from the St. Francis campaign of 1759, and then 
taken back before Rogers and his starving companions 
arrived. Something yet remains of the Scotch flavor which 
the early settlers imparted to the town. For Barnet, like 
its neighbor Ryegate, was begim by emigrants from Scot- 
land, in and about 1773, sent out by the " Scotch-American 
Company of Farmers," composed of farmers living in or 
about Glasgow. 

Haverhill and Newbury, embracing the Lower Coos 
Meadows, — the rich " Cowass " tract about the " Great 
Ox-Bow " most beloved by the Indians — rival Lancaster 
and Lunenbiu"g in beauty of situation. Wells River Junc- 
tion is a part of Newbury, and alert, citified Woodsville, 
opposite, of Haverhill. Newbru-y and Haverhill occupy the 
sightly terraces back from the River with the meadows 
about a mile in breadth between. Through the intervals 
the River flows at an average width of about five huud- 







o 

'■J 



Q 




Along the Upper V^alley 379 

red feet, allotting to Newbury much the larger part of 
the meadows. In its gentle run the stream takes a 
straight course for some distance ; then bending and 
doubling it touches the Newbury terrace ; then stretches 
luxuriously toward the hills of Haverhill. In its enclos- 
ure of the Ox-bow meadows, not over-described by the 
local historian as of " wondrous beauty and fei-tility," it 
makes a circuit of nearly four miles and returns within 
half a mile of the starting point. Through the intervals 
it has repeatedly changed its channel. In more than one 
place portions of land have been detached from one town 
and added to the other, and so shifted from Vermont to 
New Hampshire, and vice versa. 

When these towns were begun, only a dozen years be- 
fore the Revolution, a growth of splendid pine covered the 
plain where now stands New1)iu-y village, and on the New 
Hampshire side a " mighty forest " stretched back over the 
hills from the expansive interval to distant Moosilauke. 
The River abounded in salmon, the brooks in trout, and 
the forest in game. Before the townships were actually 
chartered a few pioneers were already on the ground, the 
first families coming upon rough river-craft or afoot 
through the forests along trails marked by blazed trees. 
The settlements were promoted by four officers of Colonel 
Goffe's regiment at the conquest of Canada — Colonel 
Jacob Bailey of Newbury in Massachusetts, Captain John 
Hazen of the Massachusetts Haverhill, Lieutenant Jacob 
Kent and Lieutenant Timothy Bedel, — who united in the 
project when passing through the fertile region on their 
way home from the war. Both charters were secured in 
1763, dated the same day. Colonel Bailey identified him- 
self with the development of Newbury, Captain Hazen 
with that of HaverhiU. 



380 Connecticut River 

Both towns early became important points on the 
River. Haverhill was foremost among the numerous bid- 
ders (which included nearly all of the yoimg and ambitious 
Upper Valley towns) for Dartmouth College in 1769 when 
Eleazar Wheelock was casting about for a situation. The 
town offered him a generous domain in North Haverhill 
overlooking the interval ; and so assured of its acceptance 
were the subscribers that they had a surveyor employed to 
lay it out for college purposes, when to their astonishment 
and dismay the prize went to Hanover. It was a hard 
blow ; but a quarter of a century after, in lieu of a college 
the Haverhill Academy appeared and shortly developed 
into a feeder of the lost Dartmouth. When stage-coaching 
was at its prime, Haverhill Corner, the chief village of the 
township, had become a bustling centre, for The Corner 
was a place where the stages of the great " through lines " 
between the seaboard and the north " laid up " over night. 
Then big cheery taverns were here and life was animated 
with the comings and goings of many travellers. Some- 
times the nabobs of that day, travelling the road in their 
grand private equipages, added a dash of gaiety to the scene 
about the taverns. The road, too, was enlivened by the 
passage up and down of great merchandise wagons. New- 
bury also enjoyed a period of animation as a centre of the 
River transportation before the competition of the rail- 
roads. It, too, had its day of cheerful taverns, and the 
now quiet village thoroughfare bustled with life. Educa- 
tional institutions of importance were then here, among 
them the Newbury Seminary. The old seminary building 
yet remains, an example of the plainer type of the New 
England academy of the early nineteenth century. 

Picturesqueness is the prevailing note of these towns 
as they appear to-day. Along the serene streets here and 




o 



I 



Along the irpper \"alley 381 

there, fronted by graceful elms, the visitor comes agreeably 
upon fine specimens of those spacious mansions, survivals 
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 
which characterize and dignify the older River towns 
throughout the long Valley. Especially fine is the " Col- 
onel Thomas Johnson house " on the Ox-Bow, Newl:iury 
side, the white oak frame of which was raised on the day 
that the news of the Battle of Lexington reached Newbm-y, 
whereupon the workmen immediately left to join the army 
at Cambridge. Most interesting, also, is the white group 
about the square at Haverhill Corner. One of these 
houses is an old-time inn remodelled, the " Bliss Tavern " 
of genial memory. In Newbury the present-day inn is 
an enlargement of another old tavern dating from soon 
after the Revolution. Both towns, with their fine interval 
and upland farms, their dairying, maple sugar making, 
and manufactiu-ing concerns, continue to be comfortably 
prosperous. Several of the larger farms have descended 
from father to son through the generations from the first 
settlement. 

Of the towns along the remaining reach of thirty miles 
to White River Junction, each has its own distinct charm 
either in setting or environment. The villages and farms 
of Piermont, next below Haverhill, and Bradford below 
Newbury, spread picturesquely over terraces in the heart 
of tranquil landscape. Orford and Fairlee next below 
occupy beautiful openings, with sweeps of green interval 
broadening on the Orford side, the River flowing gently 
between in a graceful curve. The Street of Orford, over- 
looking the interval, is dignified by a succession of old white 
mansion-hoiises bespeaking the quiet elegance of former 
days. Fairlee's Street, backed by a rugged cliff at the 
upper end, is markedly neat. From the bridge connecting 



382 Connecticut River 

the two towns one may look down upon the scene of the 
trials of Moray's steamboat in the seventeen-nineties. 
Lyme and Thetford, adjoining Hanover and Norwich, are 
larger villages than their neighbors above, having some 
manufacturing in parts, but an outlying pastoral coimtry. 

The Hanover of to-day, though small in population 
outside the college colony, has an urban air and a distinc- 
tion finer and rarer than would have been conferred upon 
it had those seventeenth century " Dresden statesmen " 
won their play for a state and transformed the college- 
town into a capital, only to mix politics with learning. As 
it is, Hanover is the college town preeminent in the Valley, 
its classic shades imdefiled by distracting elements. Lying 
half a mile back from and above the River, and a mile distant 
from the railroad on the Vermont side, the town is approached 
most agreeably by the regular stage — a genuine old-time 
Concord coach, — which meets all trains at the Norwich- 
Hanover station. The way from the station crosses an 
old stout-timbered covered bridge, mounts an abrupt rise 
from the River-bank, winds along college-flavored streets, 
and on to the finish with a grand swing of the coach up 
to the portal of the Wheelock Inn on the College Plain. 

The assemblage of college buildings of varied dates and 
architecture around and about the deep elm-shaded Green, 
constitutes a dignified and inspiriting spectacle. Among 
the stately structm-es the sites of Eleazar Wheelock' s hum- 
ble beginnings are definitely traced. Here is the place of 
his first log hut in which the college was started by the 
moving up of the Indian school from old Lebanon in Con- 
necticut ; here the second and ampler president's house, 
still preserved in the frame of the Howe Library; here 
the spot where the first Commencement was held, in August, 
1771, in the open air. There were on that memorable 



4 



I 



Along the Upper Valley 383 

occasion four candidates for the degree in arts, the stage 
was a platform of rough-hewn boards ascended by an inclined 
hemlock plank. The histories tell of Governor John Went- 
worth's presence with a retinue of forty fine gentlemen 
from Portsmouth, and how an ox was roasted whole on 
the Green and served to the populace with a barrel of rum, 
at the governor's expense. Notwithstanding this magnif- 
icent outlay, at the commencement dinner next day at 
the president's house some of the governor's fastidious 
friends were shocked at the crudeness of the feast for the 
lack of proper table furnishings, and because the college 
cook lay asleep from over-indulgence in the holiday bottle. 
Moor Hall marks the site of the first building for the 
Moor's Indian Charity School, the nucleus of the college. 
The colonial College Church dates from 1796. The new 
Dartmouth Hall of 1905-06 reproduces the Old Dartmouth 
Hall, begun in 1784, from timbers hewn from great trees 
on its site, and the centre of the cherished old-time college 
group, till its lamentable burning in 1904. In Wilson 
Hall are seen portraits of Eleazar Wheelock and his suc- 
cessors in the college presidency ; of Samson Occum, the 
Mohegan, Wheelock's first pupil in the old Lebanon school, 
that wonderful Indian who, sent to England in the interest 
of Wheelock's work, aroused such enthusiasm among the 
clergy and nobility by his preaching, and raised the English 
and Scotch funds of twelve thousand pounds, headed with 
the king's subscription ; the Earl of Dartmouth, for whom 
the college was named hi compliment to his headship of the 
London trustees of the English fund ; of Daniel Webster, 
the " re-founder " ; and of other worthies identified with 
the college's growth. In College Hall, the most elegant 
of the modern buildings, with its grand semi-circular porch 
and terrace, commanding a full view over the Campus, its 



384 Connecticut River 

tastefully embellished interior, with great dining-hall, club- 
rooms, billiard and pool rooms, is seen the rnodern college 
club-house in perfection. In a favored spot east of the 
central grounds is found the line athletic field. Beyond, 
in the College Park of sylvan charm, is the classic tower, 
near which the seniors on class-day gather to smoke the 
"pipe of peace" after the old Indian fashion. On the 
River bank are the boat-houses for the colles;e men's fleet 
of canoes. On the crest of the bank, north of the bridge, 
and near " Webster's Vale," stood the pine from which in 
1773 John Ledyard fashioned his canoe, a "dugout" 
fifty feet long and three feet wide, for that pioneer voyage 
of his down the River's length to old Hartford, with a 
bearskin for covering, a shelter of willow twigs at one 
end of the craft, dried venison for provisions, and Ovid 
and the Greek Testament for companionship : one of the 
first navigators of the Upper Connecticut of the Caucasian 
race, and one of the most romantic and original manifesta- 
tions of the Dartmouth spirit, which has since so conspic- 
uously pervaded Dartmouth men, as this epitome of his 
extraordinary career, contributed by a distinguished alum- 
nus, strikingly exhibits : — 

John Ledyard, born at Groton, Connecticut, 1751. Enters 
Dartmouth College 1772. While a freshman absents himself for 
three months without leave in rambling among the Indians of Can- 
ada and the Six Nations. Leaves the college in a canoe made with 
his own hands and descends the Connecticut alone to Hartford. A 
sailor before the mast, goes to Gibraltar and the Barbary Coast, 
returning by the West Indies. Appears in London and there meets 
Captain Cook, then about to sail on his voyage round the world, who 
appoints him corporal of marines. On this expedition is absent for 
four years, visiting the South Sea Islands, China, Siberia, the western 
coast of North America, twice entering the Arctic Seas in quest of 
the Northwest passage. Returns to America, publishes his travels, 




Oh 

to 



o 
-a 



o 

c 



1/ 
be 



o 



I 



Along the Upper Valley 385 

and endeavors to enlist merchants in commerce with the East. Is 
next seen in Spain and in Paris, there meeting Thomas Jefferson, 
then American minister at the Court of France, whom he impresses 
with his project for the exploration of the territory between the 
Pacific and the Mississippi which twenty years later was traversed 
by Lewis and Clark, under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson, then Pre- 
sident. Unites with John Paul Jones in an undertaking to establish 
trading-posts on the Northwest Coast, there to traffic in furs, which 
fails for want of adequate capital. Determined to explore western 
North America, presents himself at St. Petersburg, and from the 
Empress Catherine secures a passport across her dominions to Beh- 
ring Strait. Reaches Yakutsk on the Lena, when he is recalled 
because of the jealousy of Russian fur traders and under guard sent 
back to the confines of Poland where he is dismissed with the com- 
mand never again to enter the Empire. Resolves to explore Africa 
and while fitting out his caravan dies at Cairo, 1788, at the age of 
thirty-seven. 

In college he was a favorite with his fellow students, not unduly 
diligent in study, facile in acquisition, impatient of discipline. Else- 
where he was distinguished for his kind and lovable disposition, his 
imselfishness and philanthropy. He foresav.^ and foretold the com- 
mercial future of western North America and the East. His was 
the Dartmouth spirit. 

In the country about Hanover are delightful drives. 
Across the River in Norwich the roads out from that village 
lead to pleasant parts with fair off-reaching prospects. In 
the centre of Norwich was long the seat of Norwich Uni- 
versity, developed from Captain Alden Partridge's military 
school in 1834, whence graduated some famous men-of- 
arms in their day. Below in the Vermont Hartford town- 
ship are the beautiful Olcott Falls; and Lebanon, on 
the New Hampshire side, is replete with charms. 

These two towns, marking the south bound of the 
Lower Coos region, are the largest in population of all the 
towns in the Valley's sweep from the north, yet of rural 



386 Connecticut River 

proportions ; Hartford counting about four thousand and 
Lebanon five thousand inhabitants. 

Within the twenty-five miles' reach between White 
River Junction and the old frontier post of " Number 4," 
Charlestown, in the last French war, the four Vermont 
towns of Hartland, Windsor, Wethersfield, and Spring- 
field, and the New Hampshire Plainfield, Cornish, and 
Claremont, lie placid and prosperous all, while Ascutney 
rises in its noble outlines, the central landscape feature of 
this part of the Valley. 

Windsor remains the historic town of this group. Along 
its broad elm-lined older streets is retained not a little of 
the architecture of the period when Windsor was the first 
town in Vermont in importance and wealth. That was 
through the first third of its history from the closing 
eighteenth century, when it was distinguished as a town 
of learning and refinement (a distinction it has never lost), 
eminent for its bar, and for men of leading noted for their 
high public character. The principal dwellings then erected 
were of the commodious colonial type, often square and 
white, set in ample grounds, amid large and handsome 
gardens, an example of which is seen in the old Evarts 
mansion on the main street. The principal inn was then 
a hospitable public house with spacious pillared porch 
and a great arched ballroom the grand feature within. 
The old inn has gone and the traveller must lament its 
passing in the absence of an adequate tavern in the town 
of to-day. The historic landmark^, besides the old " Con- 
stitution house " in which Vermont was born, include the 
South Church, remodelled from the meeting-house where 
the state-making convention first met. Various literary 
institutions flourish in the town unharmed by the sombre 




^%: 



John Ledyard, the Traveller. 

' One of the most romantic and original manifestations of the 

Uartmoutli spirit." 



Along the Upper Valley 387 

influence of the Vermont State Prison in its fairest part. 
Cornish and Plainfield, on the hills across the River, are 
now distinguished as summer seats of art and literature. 
For scattered about the neighborhood of fascinating Blow- 
me-down Brook, which separates these towns on its run to 
the River, is planted the summer colony of metropolitan 
artists and writers, the Nestor of which, as the first comer, 
is Augustus St. Gaudens. Sculptors, painters, etchers, 
decorators, principally of New York, Philadelphia, and 
Boston, constitute this colony, together with a few pen- 
men, as Norman Hapgood and Winston Churchill, and 
some members of the other professions. Their dwellings 
are of gaily varying fashions : some modelled after Italian 
and Spanish villas; some, old farm-houses made over — 
Augustus St. Gaudens' s was a tavern ; others, quite stately 
country seats, being the residences of the more plutocratic 
penmen ; all in beautiful natural settings. The plantation 
lies secluded five miles oif by the river roads from the cov- 
ered bridge connecting Cornish with Windsor, whence the 
Cornish stage makes its one trip a day. 

Claremont and Springfield, the latter opposite Charles- 
town and connected by an electric-car line (the northern- 
most yet in the Valley) with the railroad, now on the east 
side, crossing the River at Windsor, are both manufactur- 
ing centres of note, with deep farms fringing on their 
intervals and terraces. Claremont utilizes the water-power 
of Sugar River ; Springfield's principal establishments are 
about the falls of the beautiful Black River. While both 
towns have lovely natural attractions, the chief one of 
Springfield, comprised in the deep narrow valley back of 
the main village through which the Black River makes 
approach to the Connecticut, is unique. Owing to Gov- 
ernor Benning Wentworth's fondness for complimenting 



388 Connecticut River 

his noble friends, Claremont derives its name from that of 
the English country seat of Lord Clive. Springfield repeats 
the name of the Massachusetts Springfield. Charlestown, 
with its greater wealth of historical associations, and its 
tranquil rural aspect, particularly invites the summer 
sojovurner. Along its broad main street, only a few rods 
back from the railroad station and park displaying " Num- 
ber 4 " lettered in the greensward, are numerous historic 
homes ; and its agreeable institutions include a well- 
equipped memorial public library. The site of old Num- 
ber 4 is properly indicated with other landmarks of the 
history-making epoch in which Charlestown had so leading 
a hand ; and delightful walks and rides in the country 
round about abound. 

Between the gorges at Bellows Falls and at Brattle- 
borough, twenty miles apart, in the reach where the Val- 
ley again expands luxm-iously, Walpole, Westmoreland, 
and Chesterfield are placed picturesquely on the River's 
east banks, with Westminster, Putney, and Dummerston 
on the west side. From the nigged heights of Bellows 
Falls Village, and the abrupt slopes of Kilburn Peak 
opposite, the lovely meadows of Walpole and Westminster 
immediately outspread. Bellows Falls Village is the 
business heart of Rockingham and the second place for 
population in the Vermont-side line through the Valley, 
Brattleborough holding the first place. The towns between 
are now charmful villages with outlying farms treasuring 
pleasant memories of an active past. Walpole, for a bril- 
liant period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries, had especial fame for its society of wits to which 
the whole region round contributed. Chief of them was 
" Joe " Dennie. " delicately made, needy of purse, but 



I 



Along the Upper Valley 389 

usually dressing in pumps and white stockings," who 
edited the Farmers' Weekly Museum, which Isaiah Thomas 
began here in 1793, and afterward The Portfolio in Phila- 
delphia, and whose writings in Walpole won him the sobri- 
quet of the " American Addison." Another was Royal 
Tyler of Brattleborough, in his sedate after-years chief- 
justice of Vermont, wit and poet, and author of The 
Contrast, the first American play to be acted upon a reg- 
ular stage by an established company of players, — at the 
old John Street Theatre ia New York, in 1786. Others 
were clever young men, some of whom became great law- 
yers. The late Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, of fragrant 
memory, in his chronicles of the Bellows family in Wal- 
pole beginning with Colonel Benjamin Bellows, the founder, 
tells how these roystering Walpole wits converted the vil- 
lage tavern into a sort of literary pandemonium, in which 
fine scholarship, elegant wit, late card-playing, hearty 
eating, and hard drinking mingled in a very fascinating 
complication. The literary flavor yet lingers about the mel- 
low town, and it is still a favorite summer abiding-place of 
literary folk ; but the convivial spirit has forever departed. 
So, too, have gone with the old days the bibulous customs, 
when in a single year forty-eight hundred barrels of cider 
were made and all drimk here, an average of three barrels 
to each man, woman, and child then in the town ; and at 
the tavern feastings punch flowed as freely as water. 

Brattleborough, spreading over its four irregular ter- 
races and intervening dells, with the deep background of 
gradually-rising hills and the foreground of Wantastiquit 
lifting a precipitous cliff above the winding River, fitly 
heads the Upper Valley's final reach to the finish at the 
Massachusetts luie. No town on the River is more attract- 
ively set. Its pleasant streets, abundantly shaded, mount 



390 Connecticut River 

the terraces, here and there with steep ascent, dip into the 
vales, and cross broad plains. Comfortable dwellings, 
often embowered in trees, not infrequently with gardens, 
or with lawns to the sidewalk edge, line the thoroughfares 
and byways. It was for its romantic beauty together with 
its salubriousness, that, half a century and more ago, during 
the prosperous vogue of the " water-cm-e," Brattleborough 
was selected for the most extensive establishments of this 
class, when niunerous professional persons, scholars and 
authors, were attracted to the place and mixed water with 
literature. Its charm of situation and environment also, 
more than its happening to be the home of his wife's fore- 
bears, brought Rudyard Kipling to abide here for a period, 
and attempt the life of a literary country gentleman. At 
his picturesque seat, — "The Naulahka," — he wrote his 
Captains Courafjeous. Other masters in art as in liter- 
ature have had the good fortime to have been born here 
or in Chesterfield across the River. Among these are the 
Mead family,. — ^Larkin Goldsmith Mead, the sculptor, 
born (1835) at Chesterfield, but spending his boyhood in 
Brattleborough, and modeling here that colossal snow 
image of an angel which got his name into the newspapers 
and brought him his patron ; his younger brother William 
Rutherford Mead, the architect, born in Brattleborough 
(1846) ; their sister, Elinor G. Mead, who became the wife 
of William Dean Howells ; and their cousin, Edwin Doak 
Mead, born in Chesterfield (1849), essayist, lecturer, re- 
former, philanthropist, and civic leader. The painter 
William Morris Hunt (1824-1879) and his yoimger brother 
the architect, Richard Morris Hunt (1828-1895) too, were 
natives of Brattleborough, but when they were boys the 
family moved to New Haven. Brattleborough is favored 
by some aesthetic industries, notably piano and organ 



'/-M 


1 






ft 


1 


■ ii - 


! 

1 




nii 


1 


^ ; 


1 




if:J 


1 


m 


k 




^B 


^^^JppL_^^vj' 


Jfttv 


«Tw^|^^| 


■ 




Hta 




^^^^H 


mjl 


^HR 


rlf'sH 


HI 


Mm 


^^i^j 



SB 
O 

o 
u 



to 



23 



Along the Upper Valley 391 

making, together with manufactures of such utilities as 
hosiery, power pumps, and brass castings. It has various 
literary institutions, with one of the best pubUc libraries in 
the Upper Valley, generously endowed by a Brattleborough 
citizen ; a pleasing " opera house " ; and a public park 
favored by handsome trees, and with a lookofE over an 
exquisite interval deep down below the plain which it 
occupies. Old Chesterfield, on the upland back from the 
River, is a serene agricultural town now, with a rich past 
upon which its natives love to dwell. Through the first 
half of the nineteenth century its Chesterfield Academy, 
as Edwin D. Mead, of the distinguished alumni, has suffi- 
ciently shown, was only second in importance to Exeter 
among New Hampshire academies. 

Vernon and Hinsdale mark the end of the Upper 
Valley attractively. Hinsdale is the larger and a manu- 
facturing town ; Vernon the smaller, given mostly to agri- 
culture. In Vernon, in the village cemetery, is the grave 
of Jemima Howe, the " Fair Captive." South Vernon has 
a pungent flavor as a place of cider-mills. 



XXVI 

The Massachusetts Reach 

Northfield's attractive Seat <at its Head — The Dwight L. Moody Institutions — 
Landmarks of the Indian Wars — Clarke's Island and its Spectre Pirate — 
Kural Hill Towns below Northfield- — Beautiful Greenfield — Turner's 
Falls — Historic Deerfield — Rare Deerfield Old Street and its Landmarks 
— Picturesque Sunderland and Whately — Old Hatfield and Hadley — The 
Russell Parsonage and the " Regicides " — " Elm Valley ": a fine Type of 
the Colonial Farm-seat. 

WITH its white and neat villages beautifully dotting 
the syniuietrical slopes backed by mountain ranges 
on both sides of the River, and the lofty buildings of its 
Dwight Ljonan Moody institutions the most conspicuous 
features of the landscape, Northfield picturesquely heads 
the Valley's reach of fifty miles across Massachusetts, as is 
fitting for the upper gateway to a region in which pictur- 
esqueness is the dominant note throughout. The Moody 
institutions give an evangelical tinge to the town of to-day, 
which but softens its varied attractions to the worldly eye. 
Interesting and impressive as practical monuments of the 
crowning endeavor in the life-work of a good man, whose 
object in founding them here in the place of his birth was 
to help the poor in purse but not in spirit to help them- 
selves to a useful education, these institutions now embrace 
the Northfield Seminary for young women, comprising 
the group of academic buildings which occup}' the main 
estate in East Northfield ; and the Mount Hermon School 
for young men, with handsome buildings and a generous 
campus for athletic games, on the west bank of the River 

.302 



The Massachusetts Reach 393 

below the Semmary plant. The other attractions of the 
old town are found in the comfortable aspect of the tree- 
embowered streets ; the mountain drives about the sur- 
rounding country ; and the numerous historic spots. 
Beers's Mountain with Beers's Hill at its southwest foot, 
reminiscent of Captain Richard Beers and King Philip's 
War, lies in East Northfield on the range of highlands 
forming the background of the town. Captain Beers's 
grave, marked with the memorial stone, is seen on the 
southwesterly spur of Beers's Hill. Beers's Plain, also 
marked, where Captain Beers and his men were surprised 
from the ambush, was the site of an Indian village. To 
the eastward lay the " Great Swamp," by the side of which, 
according to Mrs Rowlandson's narrative, the horde of two 
thousand Indians made their camp for a night in March, 
1676. 

Clark's Island, in the River off the upper end of 
Pine Meadow, has its legend of Captain Kidd and his hid- 
den treasure. As the tale rims, the captain and his men, 
despite the falls and other obstructions which repelled less 
venturesome skippers, sailed their pirate ship up from the 
Sound till they reached this secluded spot. Here they 
landed a heavy chest of gold ; dug a deep hole and lowered 
the chest into it ; covered the whole with earth and stones ; 
and then in the good old-fashioned pirate's way, selecting 
one of their number by lot, despatched him and placed his 
dead body on top of the heap, that his ghost might forever 
after guard the treasure from avaricious fortune-seekers. 
The spectre pirate seems to have been faithful to his trust 
if we are to believe the old dames' stories of the awful fate 
that befell the would-be harvesters of the fabled gains of 
his master, the bold — and maligned — corsair. 

Erving, below East Northfield, perpetuating the name 



894 Connecticut River 

of a merchant of Boston, John Erving, who bought its 
territory in the middle of the eighteenth century, is a rucal 
hill town, devoted to agricultm-e among its hills and to con- 
siderable manufacture along Miller's River, which waters 
its southern side. Gill, opposite, having the Connecticut 
on two of its sides and on another side the tributary of 
Falls River, is also largely a hill town enjoying extensive 
landscapes from its highest elevations, and with spreading 
intervals on the River's borders. It was part of Greenfield 
till 1793, when it was set up as an independent town and 
took its name from Moses Gill, a worthy Massachusetts lieu- 
tenant governor next succeeding Samuel Adams. Gill Vil- 
lage, the oldest hamlet, occupying a hill-framed plain, or 
what an artist has described as a twisted hollow, is agree- 
ably assembled about a central green. 

Greenfield, at the turn of the great curve where the 
River again trends southward, is the upper railroad centre 
of the Massachusetts Reach. In beauty and character of 
situation it does not belie its name. With its frame of 
green hills varying in contour, its two local streams 
meandering through verdant parts, — Falls River coursing 
along the upper eastern border to the Connecticvit, Green 
River winding to the Deerfield. — and its fine fringes of 
green intervals, it is veritably a town set in green fields. 
The central part spreads over an elevated plain, marked 
by broad beautifiUly shaded streets, the Main Street double- 
lined with elms ; by numerous old-style commodious dwell- 
ings and spacious grounds surroimding them, often adorned 
with large gardens ; and by public buildings of various 
styles and dates denoting an important past with an active 
present, for Greenfield has been the shire town of Franklin 
County since the creation of this county in 1811. The 
several historic spots are suitably marked by monuments, 




o 
o 



-a 
O 

-3 






The Massachusetts Reach 395 

placed through the efforts of the Pocumtuck Valley Memo- 
rial Association, an excellent historical society inspired by 
Mr. George Sheldon, the historian of these parts. The most 
interesting of them are in the " North Parish," — the place 
where Captain Turner was slain on the retreat in the 
Great Falls Fight, and the scene of the massacre of Eunice 
Williams on the direful march of the Deerfield captives. 

Turner's Falls, now a place of important manufactures, 
with the water-power about the Indians' great fishing place 
utilized by a dam and canals, is a half-hour's trolley-car 
ride, or pleasanter drive from Greenfield centre. The falls 
lie near by a romantic region. The site of the Falls Fight 
is marked by a monument at Riverside, in Gill township. 
Montague, south and east of the Falls, with its ambitiously 
titled upper village of Montague City, was the " Hunting 
Hills " of Sunderland famous the country round in colonial 
days for its big game. When it became a district of Sun- 
derland, in 1754, it was given the name of Captain Wil- 
liam Montague, the commander of the " Mermaid " at the 
taking of Cape Breton. It dates as a separate town from 
the opening of the Revolution. Montague City was chris- 
tened shortly after the construction of the canal of the 
Upper Locks company in 1793, with the fond hope of the 
speedy development of a little metropolis here. 

Deerfield, on the plain beneath the Deerfield mountain 
range, owes much of its natural charm to the Deerfield 
River, entering from the Deerfield valley at the south end 
and flowing northward, then eastward, through deep level 
meadows to its union with the Connecticut. The historic 
features of the village all cluster about the delectable 
Deerfield Old Street. On the central common where the 
monument stands within the lines of the palisaded fort of 
1689-1758, are the marked sites of the Benoni Stebbins 



396 Connecticut River 

house which, at the Sack of 1704, that band of " seven men 
besides women and children " so valiantly held against the 
assaults of three hundred, and the Ensign Sheldon house, 
the stout door of which with its " hatchet-hewn face," now 
in neighboring Memorial Hall, " still tells the tale of that 
fateful day." On the lane by the side of the common, 
opening the " Old Albany Road," is seen Parson Williams's 
second house, well preserved, on the original minister's-lot. 
Farther down is the ancient burying-ground on the 
meadows, with its graves of victims of the Sack and of 
various town worthies. 

As interesting, and more, perhaps, is the succession of 
venerable mansions and humbler dwellings along Deerfield 
Old Street under the boughs of its noble elms, each with a 
story or a romance to tell. On a knoll above the street- 
way is Deerfield's Old Manse, with its ancient wing, the 
latter dating back to 1694 and one of the few houses that 
escaped burning in the Sack. At that time it was the 
home of Samuel Carter, his wife, and their six children. 
Wife and children were all seized by the Indians — one 
child was killed, the rest were marched off with the cap- 
tives to Canada. One was redeemed and got back to 
Deerfield ; two were afterward known to have married 
Indians. The mansion dates from 1768, when it was 
built, attached to the little old house, by Joseph Barnard, 
the estate then having been long in the Barnard family. 
After Joseph the mansion was occupied by his son Samuel 
for a score of years, and a pretty incident of Samuel's 
time was a wedding here on a December Sunday morning, 
in 1792, before church service, when the three lovely 
daughters of the house, all " dressed in sky-blue gowns," 
were married to three gallants of Greenfield. In 1807 the 
Rev. Hosea Hildreth, then preceptor of the Deerfield 



The Massachusetts Reach 397 

Academy, leased the mansion, and it was the birthplace of 
his son Richard Hildreth, the historian. It became the 
manse with its occupation later, in 1807, by the Rev. 
Samuel WiUard, nephew of President Willard of Harvard, 
his alma mater, upon his coming to the pastorate of the 
Deerfield parish, as his first settlement. It remained his 
home for more than haK a century, with the exception of 
seven years spent in the Old Colony town of Hingham, 
with which he had affectionate associations, for there in 
1808 he married his wife, "the lovely Susan Barker," as 
he recorded in his diary. Rare distinction was conferred 
upon the manse by the gracious hospitality, scholarship, 
and refinement of the minister and his family. Channing, 
Parkman, the remarkable father of the historian Parkman, 
Emerson, and Holmes were among the throng of welcome 
guests who crossed its generous threshold. 

Another dwelling that survived the Sack is the " Frary 
house," with the date of 1698 painted on its chimney. 
This was at one time a tavern, and the local guide makes 
note of its doubtful honor in having harbored Aaron Burr 
for a night. Of other old estates marked by tablets arrest- 
ing the visitor's attention is the Sheldon homestead, dating 
back to 1708 and handed down from sire to son to the 
present generation. In the lane, beside the Common, is 
" the little brown house on the Albany Road," the story of 
which Mr. Sheldon has told in his fascinating idyl, — where 
long lived that remarkable genius Epaphras Hoyt, scientist, 
military expert, antiquarian, philosopher, high sheriff; and 
his father before him, David Hoyt, one of the Deerfield 
captives ; where, under Epaphras Hoyt's tutorial direction, 
his nephew Edward Hitchcock, afterward Professor and 
President Hitchcock (born on the adjoining homestead, 
son of Deacon and Mary Hoyt Hitchcock) made youthful 



398 Connecticut River 

ventures into astronomy and other high learning ; and 
where Hitchcock, yet a boy, was inspired to his fervid 
tragedy of 1814, The Downfall of Bonaparte, which was 
produced with great eclat in the Deerfield meeting-house, 
and for its swelling rhetoric had a rare vogue with young 
declaimers in New England towns. Other interesting 
houses are associated with artists of fame. At the south 
end of Deerfield Old Street is the J. Wells Champney house, 
with an old-fashioned box-bordered front garden, which was 
Champney's principal studio from the eigh teen-seventies 
thr'ough the remainder of his life. Farther south, at " The 
Bars," is the Fuller homestead, where, in the spreading 
gambrel-roofed house embowered in elms and maples 
George Fuller was born and lived a large part of his life 
and where his masterpieces were conceived. 

Memorial Hall, established in the old Deerfield Academy, 
and a monument to the devotion of the Pocumtuck Valley 
Memorial Association to thorough and accurate historical 
research, should be reserved till the finish of the round of 
Deerfield " featm-es " and its collections leisurely examined. 
Nor should the exhibits of the society of arts and crafts, 
in which Deerfield particularly excels, be ignored. 

South Deerfield, on the plain west of Sugarloaf, is 
called the commercial end of the town, but beyond the 
gentle hum of a factory or two, a touch of animation about 
the bunches of country stores, and the sociable piazzas of 
the inn with the sanguinary name, it appears to the casual 
visitor as serenely unbusied as Deerfield Old Street. After 
a stroll over the field of the " Battle of Bloody Brook," 
through which the brook glides sluggishly as of old, a 
glance at the quaint monument in the little park, then at 
the stone slab in the front of a neighboring house that 
marks the grave of many of the " Flower of Essex," it is the 




•a 



o 






o 

■a 

C 

o 
o 



The Massachusetts Reach 399 

customary thing to make the easy ascent of Sugarloaf 
and gaze upon the expansive panorama of winding river 
and valley, meadows and terraces, and distant hill and 
mountain. 

Sunderland, on the east side of the River facing Sugar- 
loaf and extending southward to Hadley bounds, and 
Whately on the west side reaching to Hatfield, are both 
farming towns, both cultivating to some extent Connecti- 
cut Valley tobacco, and Sunderland making a specialty of 
onions. Sunderland's village clustered about Sunderland 
Street, beautifully shaded by maples, spreads along the 
interval backed by hills rising- northward to Mount Toby, 
on whose ledges are those "Sunderland parks" of giant 
maples, cascades and glens, which Charles G. Whiting 
depicts with the touch of a Thoreau. Whately's village 
lies on upland above the meadows with a background of 
hills of steep and rugged sides. Sunderland dates back to 
1718, when it was cut mostly from Hadley and given its 
name in honor of Charles Spencer, earl of Sunderland. 
Whately, in Hatfield bounds till 1771, received the name 
of Governor Hutchinson's friend, Thomas Whately, then 
under-secretary to Lord Suffolk. 

Old Hatfield and Hadley opposite are fairly in the 
heart of the Massachusetts section of the Connecticut 
Valley tobacco belt, and here tobacco farms and barns are 
the commonest sights. On the neat Hatfield plantations 
one may follow the art of tobacco growing and curing 
quite agreeably. Most of these farms lie on the fertile 
meadows bordering the River. The prevailing note of the 
Hatfield of to-day is neatness and thrift. The town seems 
to be perpetually smartened up to make its prettiest ap- 
pearance before strangers. Hatfield Street, the broad and 
beautiful thoroughfare along which the first settlers 



400 Connecticut River 

planted, and through which in those cruel old Indian days 
the savages so frequently swept in devastating raids, still 
remains the town's centre. The present village is the " Hat- 
field Street" of the original settlers. Scattered among the 
modern structures on either side of the old thoroughfare 
are ancient houses dating back to " first days." Here and 
there with the maples that line the Street mingle aged elms. 
The homesteads on the Street, to which Hatfielders point 
with the fondest pride, are those that belonged to the phil- 
anthropic Smiths, — " Uncle Oliver " and his nephew 
Austin, who from small beginnings, the former in the 
country store, amassed large fortunes, large for their days 
which knew not "high finance," and bequeathed them to 
the public good. Oliver founded the Smith Charities from 
which a group of eight Valley towns benefit, and Austin's 
fortune, through the beneficence of his sister Sophia, went to 
the foundation of Smith Academy in Hatfield for the equal 
training of both sexes, and Smith College in Northampton 
for women. Some town antiquary will identify the site 
of the house where lived Colonel Samuel Partridge (1645- 
1740) the powerful colonial leader of the Valley in affans 
of war and politics, whose life continued active almost to 
its end in his ninety-fifth year. Here too was the scene, 
in the meeting-house, of the three-day's August convention, 
immediately preceding the " Shays's Rebellion " of 1786, 
when fifty towns were represented and the formidable list 
of twenty-five " grievances " against the state government 
was drawn up. 

Hadley, on the meadow-bordered peninsula formed by 
the River's great loop westward and back again, centres 
about the original Town Street, now West Street, stretch- 
ing from bank to bank of the River, upon which the first 
home-lots fronted and which became the scene of animated 



The Massachusetts Reach 401 

happenings with the muster of the yeomen soldiery in the 
Indian wars when Hadley was the military headquarters. 
The mellow old street is exceptionally broad, and its road- 
ways border a deep strip of green or common in the middle 
embellished with a double row of venerable elms. Now it 
wears the tranquil air of retirement from a well-spent life. 
Old dwellings line its sides, some hard weathered, some 
interesting examples of colonial architecture, displaying 
the high-boy scroll above the front door ; the more modern 
houses and other structures being for the most part on 
adjacent streets. 

The most interesting of all the old town's landmarks, 
— the site of Parson John Russell's house in which the 
"regicides," Whalley and Goffe, were secretly harbored 
for so many years, and beneath which the ashes of one if 
not of both are supposed yet to lie, — is now covered by the 
hotel at the corner of West Street and Academy Lane. 
Sheldon, who has done so much for true history in clearing 
up the story of the regicides here, by separating fact from 
fable, would have a suitable memorial erected at this spot 
to the chivalric minister whom he justly terms the " great- 
est hero of Hadley." It is Sheldon's belief that the ashes 
of Whalley, who was buried under the kitchen cellar of the 
parsonage, still rest in an undiscovered grave somewhere 
beneath the hotel, notwithstanding the circumstantial rela- 
tion of the finding of his bones some years ago (which 
Sheldon believes were the remains of an Indian buried 
here years earlier) ; and that Goffe, who, according to the 
evidence of various historical ^vriters, died in Hartford and 
was buried there, really died in the Russell house and was 
entombed by the side of his older associate and father-in- 
law. Sheldon also reasons from shreds of evidence, some 
of which have escaped other investigators or have been 



402 Connecticut River 

slighted, and which he pieces together in an effective 
whole, that Goffe might have been spirited away to Hart- 
ford some time early in King Philip's War, during the 
confused and congested condition of Hadley when it was 
the headquarters of troops, and that he might have re- 
mained concealed there (as he is known to have been for 
an indefinite period) till his infirmities had increased and 
he seemed bereft of most of his earlier friends, when he 
made his secret way back to Hadley to die imder the shelter 
of the friend who never failed him for a moment. 

The meeting-house of Parson Russell's time stood in 
the middle of the green, opposite the parsonage. Its 
lineal descendant is seen in the First Church, of early 
nineteenth century model, on Middle Street. In near 
neighborhood is Hopkins Academy, the successor of the 
grammar school established by the town in or about 1667, 
by means of its part of the fund bequeathed for various 
educational purposes by Edward Hopkins, second governor 
of Connecticut. The school became the academy nearly a 
century ago, and is reminiscent of the schooldays of some 
famous Hadley boys. Another excellent institution, the 
gift of a townsman, is the public library. These interest 
in their different ways ; but the aesthetic visitor lingers 
most fondly about the frequent colonial mansions under 
the Hadley elms which give the ripe town its distinctive 
character. One regrets the loss by fire in recent years of 
the homestead at the north end of West Street which was 
the birthplace of General Joseph Hooker, whose sobriquet 
of " Fighting Joe Hooker," so deprecated by him, clings 
permanently to his memory. In another part of the town, 
however, yet remains the choice Huntington homestead, 
" Elm Valley," birthplace of the late Bishop Frederic Dan 
Huntington of Central New York, and one of the finest 




-a 
a 



•a 



o 



2 '■^ 






o 



>^ 4) 

= 

ri - 
> 



a 



The Massachusetts Reach 403 

types in the Valley, of the colonial farm-seat the history 
of which reaches back to the middle of the eighteenth 
century, with family records illustrating the best of the 
old-time New England life. 

This is, properly speakmg, the Porter-Phelps-Hunt- 
ington homestead. It occupies a rarely beautiful spot two 
miles north of old West Street, in the north village. The 
original farm was taken up and the house built by Bishop 
Huntington's maternal great-grandfather, Captain Moses 
Porter, in 1752, when there was no dwelling in Hadley 
township north of West Street, and the nearest houses 
were across the River in Hatfield village. Captain Porter 
was allied to one of the families first settling in Hadley, 
and, a young farmer, had just married Elizabeth Pitkin, 
who came of a pioneer Hartford family, and whose mother 
had been the third wife of Parson Russell of Hadley. 
Only three years afterward Captain Porter went north 
with his Hadley company in the French war, leaving his 
young wife and their child, a second Elizabeth, alone at 
the homestead. In her letters to her husband in camp 
the lonely wife passed lightly over her perils on the isolated 
farm when Indians prowled about the house, at night often 
" showing their savage features at the windows." Captain 
Porter was early captured and killed near Lake George. 
Upon his loss the widow bravely took the direction of the 
farm, and carried it on successfully till Elizabeth Porter 
had grown up and had married Charles Phelps of an early 
Northampton family. Then began the Phelps regime 
under which the homestead was enlarged, and the farm 
bounds so expanded as to include nearly the whole of 
Mount Warner, where were great sheep pastures and rich 
woodland. As time passed on Squire Phelps with his 
growing family gave distinction to the place. Dr. Dwight 



404 Connecticut River 

in his " Travels " makes especial allusion to its exceptional 
character. Visiting the homestead on a May day in 1798, 
when he enjoyed its hospitality at " tea," Dr. Dwight was 
particularly charmed with the daughter of the house, — 
a third Elizabeth, then nineteen and blooming, and upon 
his return to New Haven he discanted cleverly on her 
virtues to one of his favorite young tutors. This was 
Dan Huntington, native of Litchfield, Connecticut (his 
mother a descendant of Adrian Scrope, alias Throop, one 
of the " regicides "), a Yale graduate and an ordained min- 
ister, about to " settle " in Litchfield. Six months after 
Dr. Dwight's visit the young minister preached at Hadley 
one Sunday, and also " took tea " at the Phelps homestead. 
Then on New Years' day, 1801, Dan and Elizabeth were 
married in the " Long Room " of the homestead, before a 
grand party of relatives. After a dozen years spent in the 
Litchfield parsonage, and two or three more with a parish 
in Middletown in the Lower Valley, the Huntingtons, now 
with a quiver full of younglings, returned to live perma- 
nently at the homestead. So, in 1816, began the Hunt- 
ington regime. Frederick Dan was born in the ancestral 
home in 1819, the eleventh and last child of the family, 
and youngest of seven sons. The place as developed from 
Captain Porter's beginning and through the Huntington 
regime, is thus pleasantly sketched in Miss Arria S. Hunt- 
ington's Under a Colonial Roof tree : 

The house was originally of ample size. Its main structure bore 
the same features as to-day, except that the gaml)rel roof was added 
the next century. ... A broad hall with an open stairway leading to | 
the floor above divided good sized rooms on either hand, a parlor 
bedroom and the " Long Room " only used for state occasions. 
Another hall at a right angle led to the little door-yard filled with 
lilacs and syringas. This south entrance had its flagged walk, and 



TIL^W- 




o 
U 






<u i^ 




— o 




^ « 




X :_i 




u O 








>-< ,_, 




"? o 


c 


•;: o 












C (J 




<" (w 


-7^ 










-^ rn 




'='' K 


rt 


w^ 


o 




b< 


•" o 




c pi 








- X 








c ■-: 




ii c 




Oh "- 












C3 5 




•5 W 




^ 




o 




Z 




. p 












d: 




T3 












3 




O 




Pi 





The Massachusetts Reach 405 

small gate opening into a large space where carriages drove up. 
The front door, with its big brass knocker, was seldom used ; the 
grass grew close up to the steps of the white porch. In a wing at 
the rear stood a huge chimney occupying space enough for a small 
room, with great fireplace and ovens. Another large chimney was 
erected when the present kitchen, cheese-room, &c., were added. An 
enclosed piazza with seats along the sides, known as the " stoop," 
extended along the whole western length of the house. In harvest 
time a long table was set there for the reapers. All through the 
summer the churning, washing and other household work was there 
carried on. At nightfall it afforded a grateful retreat after the la- 
bors of the day. To those of later generations it has been a favorite 
social gathering place at that hour. . . . Through the stillness we may 
hear the tread of horses' hoofs crossing the bridge by the mill a mile 
away. The clear notes of the thrush sound from the trees along the 
shore. 

Over the threshold of this ancestral house were carried 
the three Elizabeths in direct succession, at the close of 
their long lives, to their last resting-place in the Old Hadley 
burying-ground. And here the bishop, whose summer 
home it had been throughout his life, died, in July, 1904, 
full of years like his father before him, and was buried 
with his kindred in the village graveyard. 



XXVII 

Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 

Northampton, the "Meadow City" — Its Crop of Exceptional Men — The 
D wights and the Whitneys — Sites of Jonathan Edwards's Home and 
Pulpit — Scenes of the Ely Insurrection and of Shays's Rebellion — Smith 
College — An Educational Centre — Mounts Tom and Holyoke — Holyoke, 
the " Paper City " — Its great Hydraulic Works — Chicopee and its notable 
Manufactures — Springfield, the " Queen City " — Beauty of its Setting — 
Its choice Institutions — The United States Arsenal — Scene of the over- 
throw of Shays's Rebellion. 

NORTHAMPTON is the uppermost city of the Valley, 
yet with all its metropolitan dignity it remains the 
" queen village of the meads fronting the sunrise and in 
beauty throned," as when Holland wrote. Citified struc- 
tures have indeed replaced many of the rural buildings of 
the town ; the Smith College establishment has developed 
to impressive proportions ; and a municipal theatre has 
become an assured institution ; nevertheless an exquisitely 
refined village atmosphere stUl pervades the place, the 
municipality sits as superbly as the town on the terraced 
banks, and the great deep level meadows unspoiled still 
fringe the River coursing through the lovely vale between 
Mounts Holyoke and Tom. 

It has produced, with other fine things, a rare crop of 
exceptional men. First in importance were those three 
remarkable town ministers one after another, — Eleazar 
Mather, Solomon Stoddard, and Jonathan Edwards. Next, 
the political " River gods," the three men, following John 
Pynchon of Springfield and Samuel Partridge of Hatfield, 
who were in succession the Western Massachusetts leaders 

406 





g 2.5 



> o 

C14 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 407 

in the colony, the province, and the state : Colonel John 
Stoddard, Major Joseph Hawley, a powerful influence 
with Samuel Adams and John Adams in the pre-revolu- 
tionary moves, and Caleb Strong, governor of the com- 
monwealth for eleven years, including the period of the 
war of 1812. Then there were the three Timothy Dwights. 
The first. Colonel Timothy (bom in Hatfield, 1694), son 
of Judge Nathaniel and Mehitable Dwight (she a daughter 
of Samuel Partridge), who, moving from Hatfield to North- 
ampton soon after their marriage, began the Northampton 
line of Dwights ; a lawyer of " great respectabiUty," a 
judge, a military man, and a squire in the town. The 
second. Major Timothy, Colonel Timothy's son (born at 
Fort Dummer, 1726, when his father was stationed there), 
married in 1750 to Mary Edwards, one of Jonathan Edwards's 
daughters, when she was but sixteen, a merchant, civil 
officer, judge, and a tory at the Revolution. The third, 
Doctor Timothy, Major Timothy's son (bom in Northamp- 
ton, 1752), the eldest of seventeen children, eight of them 
sons, theologian, poet, author, and president of Yale. Also, 
Dr Timothy's brother Theodore (born in 1765), one of the 
" Hartford Wits," secretary of the Hartford Convention of 
1814, and later its historian. Then the Whitneys, related 
to the Dwights, a family eminent for scholarship, begin- 
ning here with Josiah Dwight Whitney (bom in Westfield, 
1786), a merchant and son of a merchant, grandson of a 
sterling New England minister, and on the maternal side 
great-grandson to a Hatfield Dwight — Captain Henry, 
brother to Judge Nathaniel. Coming to Northampton at 
twenty-one to keep a country store as a branch of Jonathan 
Dwight & Sons, his kinsfolk, after eight years' apprentice- 
ship in their main Springfield store he married first Sarah 
Williston, of the Valley WiUiston family, notable in 



408 Connecticut River 

educational work, and second, Clarissa James, of the North- 
ampton Lymans on the maternal side, and had in all 
thirteen children, nine living to maturity and remarkable 
for varied intellectual attainments. Of Sarah Williston 
Whitney's offspring v^ere Professor Josiah Dwight Whit- 
ney (born 1819), the eminent geologist in whose honor the 
highest mountain in the United States, outside of Alaska, 
is named. Professor William Dwight Whitney (bom 1827), 
as eminent as a philologist and Sanskrit scholar, and 
Maria Whitney (bom 1830) sometime professor of modern 
languages in Smith College. Of Clarissa James Whitney's : 
James Lyman Whitney (born 1835), bibliographer, and 
dean of American librarians by virtue of his forty years' 
service in the Boston Public Library, and Henry Mitchell 
Whitney (bom 1843), former professor of English at Beloit 
College, Wisconsin. The head of the family had the sat- 
isfaction of recording in his autobiography, written down 
in a family " Fact Book," that he had been able to give all 
of his nine children a liberal education, although obliged 
to help his seven brothers and sisters from the death of 
his father, when he was but twenty years old. After 
twenty-six years of mercantile life he became a banker, 
cashier for fourteen years and for one year president of 
the Northampton bank, in those primitive days of finance 
receiving an annual salary as cashier of from one thousand 
to twelve hundred dollars, and as president, six himdred 
dollars. His creditable life closed at eighty-two. The 
Whitneys, like the Dwights, were devotedly attached to 
the interests of Yale College. 

Other families of leading were the Pomeroys, most 
conspicuous among them General Seth Pomeroy, the 
" gunsmith of Northampton " at the siege of Louisburg, 
and a soldier of the Revolution, entering the conflict at 




The Jonathan Edwards Elm, Northampton: in front of the Whitney 

house on the site of the house of Jonathan Edwards. 

The Whitney family gruuped about the tree : at the spectator's right, Professor 
Josiah Dwight Whitney, the geologist ; in front of him, seated, his wife ; next to 
him, James Lyman Whitney, the bihliographer; at the left of the ladder. Professor 
William Dwight Whitney, the philologist; at his right, his wife; between them. 
Miss Maria Whitney, profes-orof modern languages ; in the tree above the ladder, 
Henry Mitchell Whitney, professor of English literature ; at the spectator s left, 
Edward Baldwin Whitney, son of William U. Whitney, former assistant Attorney 
General of the United States. 



4 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 409 

sixty-nine with the ardor of youth ; the Lymans, putting 
forth soldiers, lawyers, and judges ; the Ashmun and Bates 
families, distinguished by United States senators. Here 
also George Bancroft, then in his twenties, and a school- 
master with his friend Dr. Cogswell at their Round Hill 
School of lofty ideals, began his " History " ; Dr. Josiah G. 
Holland spent part of his youth and later made the place 
the scene of his Kathrina ; and here George W. Cable 
established his northern home of " Tarry awhile." 

Along the picturesquely irregular streets which proceed 
from the centre over and around the terraces " with no 
very distant resemblance to the claws of a crab," as Dr. 
Dwight described them, is an unusual number of old dwell- 
ings with histories, and the sites of other historic structures. 
Naturally the site of Jonathan Edwards's home, with the 
elm, survivor of the two which he planted in front, is first 
sought. Here is now the Whitney homestead, built by 
Josiah Dwight Whitney in 1827-28, in place of the then 
dilapidated Edwards house, and identified with the youth 
of his scholarly sons and daughters. Next south of the 
Edwards house was the mansion of Major Timothy Dwight, 
in which Dr. Dwight and his brother and sisters were bom. 
Here Madam Mary Edwards Dwight long reigned, a strong, 
almost imperious personality, vigorous of mind, inheriting 
much of her father's intellectual superiority, though small 
of stature, — in her young womanhood so small and dainty 
that Dr. Dwight related, " her husband (who was as much 
above the medium height as she was below it) would some- 
times carry her around the room on his open palm held 
out at ard^s length." 

The Stoddard house in which Parson Stoddard lived 
through the greater part of his long ministry of fifty-seven 
years (1672-1729), and the grander gambrel-roofed addi- 



410 Connecticut River 

tion that his son, the colonel, subsequently erected, making 
the older house an ell, are still to be seen on well-named 
Pleasant Street, in the " Hinckley place," but separated, 
the minister's house being set off as a stable, and the colo- 
nel's addition embodied in the present dwelling. Parson 
Stoddard put up his house here in 1684. He lived first in 
the Mather parsonage, which he occupied upon his marriage 
to Esther Mather, his predecessor's widow. This house 
stood on the west corner of Main and Pleasant Streets. 
Here was born Eunice Mather, who became the wife of 
'Parson Williams of Deerfield, and the " martyr of the Sack 
of 1704." Esther Mather-Stoddard outlived Parson Stod- 
dard for seven years, attaining the age of ninety-two. He 
died at eighty-six, two years after his grandson, Jonathan 
Edwards, had become his colleague. 

The pulpit has gone with the old meeting-houses from 
which Jonathan Edwards preached for twenty-three years 
(1727 to 1750) and laid the foundation of his fame as one 
of the great metaphysicians of his age ; from which he 
led those soul-straining revivals described in his Narrative 
of Surprising Conversions, and whence he was finally so 
ruthlessly dismissed, the culmination of the tremendous 
theological controversy over his change in the test for 
the communion, making this rite the end rather than 
the means of conversion, — the controversy heightened 
doubtless by his plain speaking from the pulpit on the 
morals of the youth of his congregation, which hit some 
of the elders. But in the present First Church, the suc- 
cessor of the earlier meeting-houses on the same site, is 
seen a memorial tablet displaying his figure in relief, and 
fittingly inscribed, which was set up on the one hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of his dismissal, a tardy recognition 
of his fame and worth. 




<u 


r-; 


bO O 


<u 


u 




s 


"o 




U 


W 




OJ 






OJ 


.^ 


bO 


OJ 


v 








"o 




O 




,_ 


>» 












•yi 




JZ 


C2 


a. 


C/3 


5 




bJ3 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 411 

The Court House is on the site of the Court House of 
the Revolutionary period, the scene of the first public step 
in the agitation begun in the closing year of the Revolution 
for relief from the burdens of debt and taxes oppressing 
the people, and culminating four years later in the Shays's 
Rebellion. Northampton also was the scene of the open- 
ing act of that rebellion ; and here, too, after it was finally 
crushed, the last acts in the Valley were performed : the 
trial of a bunch of the captured leaders, when six were 
convicted of high treason and sentenced to death, and 
seven found guilty of stirring up sedition were variously 
sentenced ; the subsequent pardon of four of the six con- 
demned to the gallows ; the issue of warrants for the 
execution of the other two ; and their reprieve as the 
nooses were dangling above their necks. 

To stop the machinery of law was the first intent of 
the demonstrations throughout the whole period of these 
insurrections. Courts and lawyers were warred against 
because the former were used to enforce the collection of 
debts and taxes, and the latter under the sanction of the 
courts compelled payments. With the courts stopped it 
was argued that radical reforms would immediately fol- 
low. Back of the acts of the mob were conventions of 
delegates from the people which proceeded in accordance 
with the prescribed order of popular assemblies, and for- 
mulated the various grievances for presentation to the 
General Court in the ordinary way. But in these conven- 
tions demagogues vied with soberer-headed leaders for 
control, and when they gained it inflamed the passions of 
the malcontents to violent action. While many of the 
grievances enumerated were endorsed by men of standing 
in the community, and then- efforts were exerted to secure 
relief and reform through wise legislation, most of this 



412 Connecticut River 

class could only condemn and resist the high-handed policy 
that would force these ends at the behest of the mol). In 
the conflicts that ensued there was much parleying between 
the " insurgents " and the representatives of law and order, 
for neighbors, friends, and acquaintances were arrayed on 
either side. 

In the initial Northampton affair, which occurred in 
April, 1782, the '"insurgents" assumed to act under the 
authority of a convention held in Hatfield the previous 
March, which resolved that " there be no County Court of 
the Sessions of Peace." Their leader, Samuel Ely, of Con- 
way, the town next west of Deerfield, was an unlicensed 
preacher, who " possessed the spirit and so far as his slen- 
der abilities would permit, the arts of a demagogue in an 
imusual degree." Such was Dr. Dwight's characterization 
of him, and his performances would seem to warrant it. 
On the day set for the opening of this court in Northamp- 
ton for the April term, Ely appeared with a number of fol- 
lowers from various places, and haranguing a crowd that 
assembled before the Court House, incited them against 
the court. Nothing further, however, was then attempted. 
Eight days later he reappeared with a larger following. 
Armed with a club, again before the Court House, he 
addressed this crowd, closing with an exhortation to "come 
on, my brave boys, we'll go to the woodpiles and get clubs 
enough to knock their grey wigs off ! " They " came on " 
accordingly, and for some hours swarmed threateningly 
about the Court House; but a guard at the doors l^arred 
the entrance. • Ely himself was early arrested, and, at once 
arraigned before the court which he was attemjjting to 
close, was bound over for trial by the Supreme Judicial 
Court to convene at the same place in May. So ended 
this demonstration. 




m 



1) 



o 



•S} 



I 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 413 

In the following May, when the Supreme Court had 
come in and Ely's case was reached, an armed mob gathered 
to attempt his release and to break up this court. The 
scheme was checked by the presence of militiamen held in 
reserve. Ely pleaded guilty and, sentenced to imprison- 
ment for six months, with other penalties, was taken to 
Springfield to be lodged in the jail there. In June a band 
of a hundred or more " resolute men," mostly from the 
towns above Northampton, set out to free him . A couple of 
hours after they had marched through Northampton " with 
great steadiness and good order," fifty Northampton "law 
and order" men were off to frustrate the design. But 
before they reached Springfield the mischief was done. 
The jail had been broken open with axes and cleavers and 
the rescuers were triumphantly returning northward with 
their man. Colonel Elisha Porter, of Hadley, the county 
high sheriff, appearing on the scene, got out a force in pur- 
suit. They were overtaken at South Hadley and a blood- 
less skirmish ensued. Then both forces encamped for the 
night in the open. Next morning the " insurgents " stole 
away and made for Amherst. A detachment sent out 
from Hadley caught them on their flank and another and 
livelier skirmish took place, resulting in several broken 
heads. Thereupon both sides came to parley, when it was 
agreed that all should repair peaceably to Northampton 
and endeavor there to adjust matters. Meanwhile Ely had 
managed to slip off. The Northampton conference resulted 
in an arrangement by which Ely was to be given up, and 
both sides were to unite in a petition to the General Court 
for measures of relief. Since Ely had fled and therefore 
could not be delivered, three hostages were given for his 
return. When the hostages were placed in the town jail 
the tumult broke out anew. Suspicious that they were 



414 Connecticut River 

being held really for punishment as insiu-gent leaders, the 
mob raised a clamor for their release, with threats to burn 
the town if the demand was not instantly complied with. 
That night the jail was guarded by volunteers. The fol- 
lowing day more malcontents came in from neighboring 
towns. Now Colonel Porter called out thejjosse comitatus. 
While they were gathering, Reuben Dickinson of Amherst, 
a strong insurgent leader, having a band of three hundred 
men at Hatfield, captured a squad marching down from 
Deerfield. Then he headed toward Northampton and soon 
a messenger brought to Porter a proposal from him for 
a conference one mile above the town. Porter decUned. 
He had invoked aid from the towns down the River, and 
two hundred men were marching up from Springfield. 
Dickinson, with his force augmented, resumed his march. 
At about dusk he was before the town with his ultimatum : 
the release of the hostages within half an hour or an attack. 
Porter refused, but was ready to enter into any " reason- 
able agreement." Dickinson prepared for action, when 
another messenger appeared with a proposal from Porter 
for a meeting between the lines. This he accepted and 
the two came together with others from both sides. After 
a conference the conferees visited the jail. The hostages 
were found to be comfortably quartered and quite content. 
They had been treated fairly they declared, and earnestly 
advised a cessation of attempts for their release till the 
conditions of the bond were fulfilled. This put a new 
face on the affair. Their excellent advice was taken and 
the insurgents withdrew. 

Thus this insurrection ended without serious damage 
to either side. In due course Ely was surrendered, the 
hostages released, and all the conditions of the bond met. 
Ely was taken to Boston and detained for some time as a 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 415 

government prisoner. He did not appear again in the 
ins\u"rection. A committee of the General Court, with 
Samuel Adams at the head, came up to inquire into the sit- 
uation, and endeavor to ease it. At the November session 
of the General Court pardon was granted to all the insur- 
gents, with the single exception of Ely. But little was 
accomplished toward redressing the grievances. 

The opening act of Shays' s Rebellion was more success- 
ful than the Ely raid. The demonstration was made in 
August, 1786, four days after the convention of fifty towns 
at Hatfield, at which the formidable list of grievances was 
adopted. It was to prevent the sitting of the Court of 
General Sessions. The insurgents — or '' regulators," as 
the participators in the Shays's Rebellion called themselves 
— were said to number fully fifteen hundred. They were 
armed some with muskets, some with bludgeons, others 
with swords. They paraded "with drums beating and 
fifes playing," and held possession of the Coiurt House till 
midnight. Then, their design accomplished with ease, 
they quietly dispersed. 

The scenes were next shifted to other parts of the com- 
monwealth, those in the Valley centering about Spring- 
field. The last acts in. Northampton took place in the 
spring and summer of 1787. The trial of the bunch of 
captured leaders was held before the Supreme Judicial 
Court sitting in the meeting-house, and continued through 
twelve April days. The execution of the two of the 
six condemned to death who were denied a pardon, — 
Jason Parmenter of Bernardston and Henry McCuUock of 
Pelham, — was first appointed for the twenty-fom-th of 
May, and the gallows were got ready for them ; but on the 
twenty-third they were reprieved for four weeks. On 
June 21, the fateful day, no further reprieve being looked 



416 Connecticut River 

for by the populace, crowds flocked into the town, some 
from quite distant parts, to witness the promised spectacle. 

First came the march of the prisoners with their mili- 
tary guard from the jail on Pleasant Street to the meeting- 
house, there to suffer the then customary infliction of a 
public sermon to the condemned. Since the edifice would 
hold Ijut a fraction of the assemblage, the prisoners and the 
troops were lined up in the street in front and the services 
were conducted from one of the windows. There was a 
prayer by one parson, the Rev. Enoch Hale of Westhamp- 
ton, and the sermon by another, the Rev. Mr. Baldwin of 
Palmer. The preacher's text was from Romans vii, 21 : 
" I find then a law that, when I would do good, evil is 
present with me." These services over, the solemn march 
was resumed, and the procession moved slowly along the 
thronged streets to Pancake Hill, the soldiers escorting 
the high sheriff and his deputies, and the prisoners under 
a double guard. At the foot of the gallows positions Avere 
taken, and when apparently the final moment had come 
and the multitude were agape with expectation, the high 
sheriff stepped forward and produced the reprieve. It was 
a great disaj^pointment to many in the audience, as was 
recorded in more than one diary of the day. However, 
the prisoners were returned to the jail, and hopes were 
indulged by the disappointed that the spectacle was only 
postponed. But they were respited two times more, and 
finally were pardoned with the convicted leaders in other 
parts. 

The original buildings of Smith College occupied the 
homesteads of two judges which formerly stood side by 
side, with fine mansion-houses set in gardens. Here the 
college, founded by a maiden lady with her fortune of 
three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, on broad 




V 



be 



o 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 417 

and definite lines of her own devising, was begun in 1874 
with a single building for collegiate purposes, and a few 
comfortable dwellings for students' homes, instead of the 
usual dormitory, grouped about it, the second strictly 
woman's college then established in the country. Now 
the institution, with a property value of nearly two and a 
quarter millions, comprises a cluster of nine college build- 
ings and thirteen dwelling-houses, spreading over beautiful 
estates in the heart of the city, and contributing largely 
to its importance. Meeting with fine competence Miss 
Maria Smith's design, as expressed in her will, to provide 
an education " suited to the mental and physical wants of 
women," and equal to that aiforded to men, " not to ren- 
der the sex any the less feminine but to develop as fully 
as may be the powers of womankind," Smith continues 
admirably to maintain a foremost position in her sphere 
which she took at the beginning. The youngest of the 
establishments in this favored educational centre, — which 
includes, within a radius of seven miles of Northampton, 
Amherst College at Amherst, the Massachusetts Agricul- 
tural College at North Amherst, Moimt Holyoke College 
at South Hadley, and Williston Seminary at Easthampton, 
— Smith ranks with the highest. Kindred but independ- 
ent institutions are the Home Culture Clubs, established 
in handsome and well equipped houses of their own, a 
generous and practical enterprise of MJr. Cable for the 
wholesome betterment of the commimity. Also several 
free libraries of excellent standard endowed by prosperous 
citizens. 

In the rural section of the city called " Paradise " are 
choice homes, among them Cable's " Tarryawhile " on the 
banks of Mill River, the stream which flows through the 
city — a picturesque feature in the landscape, and upon 



418 Connecticut River 

the placid waters of which the Smith girls row and paddle 
their light caDoes. Farther out on Mill river is the district 
of Florence, now a centre of silk manufacture, which was 
early begun in the Valley. In the late eighteen-thirties, 
when the wild '' mulberry speculation " swept through the 
land, with the accompanying disastrous efforts at silk- 
worm culture, this hamlet was one vast mulberry-leaf nurs- 
ery, a single cultivator, Samuel Whitmarsh, having some 
five hundred acres planted with mulberry trees. In the for- 
ties tlie place was selected for the third attempt in New Eng- 
land at the establishment of a Foinrieriau " commuuity " 
(following those at Brook Farm and at Hopedale). It 
was a joint stock concern under the title of the " North- 
ampton Association of Education and Industry"; and 
committed to no creed, its adherents were facetiously 
dubbed " Nothingarians." 

Mounts Tom and Holyoke are both accessible by cars, 
and afford from their summits enchanting views. The 
prospect spread out from Mount Holyoke constitutes the 
more extensive panorama over the rich alluvial Valley. In 
it the observer has " the grand and beautiful united, the lat- 
ter, however, greatly predominating " to-day, as sixty years 
ago, when President Hitchcock first adequately described 
it in his Sketch of the Scenery of Massachusetts included in 
his oflficial geological reports. The changes made in the 
decades only heighten its distinguished charm. Looking 
down upon the lovely plain a thousand feet below, now as 
then the object that " most of all arrests the attention of 
the man of taste," is the River, winding its way "majes- 
tically yet most beautifully." Mount Tom is now a public 
reservation, and it is kept ever fresh in current literature 
by Gerald Stanley Lee, through his chapbook outdoor mag- 
azine " devoted to rest and worship, and to a little look-off 




.■ s 

OS ^ 



"-) — 

o ^ 

S w 



c ^ 

? « 

^ So 

-C o 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 419 

on the world." The tradition of the naming of these 
heights as first printed by Dr. Holland in his History of 
Western Massachusetts, is dismissed by the later historian 
of Northampton, James Russell Trumbull, as a " fanciful 
and poetical legend," since he finds the origin of " Mount 
Tom" in doubt, while "Mount Holyoke," although evi- 
dently perpetuating the memory of the pioneer Elizur 
Holyoke, of Springfield, is not mentioned in the Northamp- 
ton records before 1664. Holland's legend is so picturesque, 
however, that it will stand in popular history : 

.... Some five or six years after the settlement of Springfield, a 
company of the planters went northward to erplore the country. 
One party, headed by Elizur Holyoke, went up on the east side of 
the River, and another, headed by Rowland Thomas, went up on the 
west side. The parties arriving abreast at the narrow place in the 
River below Hockanum, at what is now called Rock Ferry, Holyoke 
and Thomas held a conversation with one another across the River, 
and each then and there gave his own name to the mountain at 
whose feet he stood. The name of Holj'oke remains uncorrupted 
and without abbreviation, while that of Thomas has been curtailed 
to simple and homely ' Tom.' ' 

Amherst and South Hadley were both parts of Old Hadley 
till 1775. Both are properly dominated by their colleges: 
Amherst on its commanding hill overlooking lovely views 
along the Valley, and Mount Holyoke College on its eleva- 
tion equally rich in prospects. The two historic institu- 
tions have a sentimental relation : for Mary Lyon, the 
founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and a pioneer in the 
higher training of women, was a pupil at Amherst during 
its first years, when it was coeducational. 

In Holyoke on the west side of the River and Chicopee 
on the east side we are within the original limits of Spring- 
field. So late as 1850 what is now the " Paper City " was 



420 Connecticut River 

a precinct of rural West Springfield (itself a part of Spring- 
field till 1774) ; and Chicopee bad been only two years set 
off from Springfield as a separate municipality. Holyoke, 
at about tbe time of its incorporation, was a place of farms, 
one small cotton mill, and a few houses, and was known as 
" Ireland Parish," a name suggestive of Irish origin ; which 
it was, for the first settlement of this territory was begun, 
prior to 1745, by a venturesome family of Rileys. Chicopee 
was a more ancient plantation, the hamlet having been 
started within four years of Springfield's beginning. The 
pioneers here were Henry and Japhet Chapin, two of tlie 
four sons of Deacon Samuel Chapin, one of Springfield's 
"first men," whose effigy appears in St. Gaudens's statue 
of " The Puritan," in Springfield. These Chapin brothers 
had numerous offspring, and Holland states that for a 
long period almost the entire j^opulation living in the 
present territory of Chicopee were their descendants or 
connections. It was Japhet's daughter Hannah who 
became the bride of young John Sheldon of Deerfield and 
went so heroically through the cruel experiences of the 
Sack of 1704. 

Holyoke was created with the development of the 
water-power of Hadley Falls on a systematic scale, under- 
taken in the late eigh teen-forties. The utilization of this 
power had begun a couple of decades earlier when a Hadley 
Falls Company erected a wing-dam to supply power to a 
single cotton-mill. The larger promoters came in with 
plans fully matured for the establishment at once of an 
important manufacturing centre. Fu'st the necessary 
lands were obtained from the farmers by an affable and 
shrewd agent, who was careful not to declare the real 
object of the purchase ; and finally a new Hadley Falls 
Company, with Perkinses, Lymans, and Dwights, names 




3 
O 






Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 421 

conspicuously associated with New England manufacturing 
development of that day, among the corporators, duly 
appeared for business. The construction of a dam complete- 
ly across the River was completed in the autiunn of 1848, 
the greatest water-power then known to history. On the 
day appointed for its inauguration throngs gathered on 
the river-banks and the neighboring bluffs to see the show. 
They witnessed instead a catastrophe. The story is full 
told in these despatches telegraphed to the head office in 
Boston : 

10 A. M. Gates just closed ; water filling behind dam. 
12 M. Dam leaking badly. 

2 P. M. Stones of bulkhead giving way to pressure. 
3.20 P. M. Your old dam's gone. 

The huge mass of lumber, stone, and earth had been 
wrenched from its foundations, and rushed pell-mell down 
stream on the great wave, rolling over and over, and break- 
ing into fragments. 

In the foUowing spring a second structiu-e was planned 
on a more scientific basis, and the building of it begun 
under the direction of a West Point-trained engineer. This 
work proved as brilliant a success as the first a dismal fail- 
ure. Upon its completion, in October, 1849, a greater 
throng than on the previous occasion gathered to witness 
its test ; and when it was seen to withstand the pressure 
effectually, and the water at full head " pom-ed down the 
perpendicular face in an unbroken sheet," a great cheer 
from six thousand throats mingled with the music of the 
fall. With this achievement Holyoke's actual beginning 
dates. The town fuU-fledged was incorporated in March, 
1850, and Holyoke was taken for its name as a proper 
compliment alike to the worthy Elizur Holyoke and to the 



422 Connecticut River 

neighboring mount. By 1851 the new Hadley Falls Com- 
pany had two good-sized cotton-miUs running. Two years 
later the pioneer paper mills were established. The fol- 
lowing year more and larger cotton mills were added to 
the increasing groups of factories. Then came a temporary 
halt in the town's progress with the hard times of 1857, 
and a financial crisis in the affairs of the Hadley Falls 
Company. After, however, that corporation had been suc- 
ceeded by the Holyoke Water Company, composed of the 
same class of manufacturing developers, a period of ex- 
pansion set in which has continued imchecked. By 1873 
the town had become a city. It is now the third in popu- 
lation of the River cities. It obtained its title of the 
" Paper City " by virtue of its fine paper-making concerns 
which early outnumbered any other single class of manu- 
factures in the place. 

But chief of all the numerous things interesting in this 
now highly developed manufacturing centre are the per- 
fected hydraulic works. The present dam, a twentieth 
centmy affair, erected in 1904, is a splendid construction 
of solid masonry. He who will have statistics is told that 
it is ten hundred and twenty feet long between the abut- 
ments, thirty-eight feet high, fifteen feet thick five feet 
below the crest, and thui:y-foiu' feet wide at the Ijase. 
There is the great gate-house under which springs the 
water that generates from twenty-five thousand to thirty 
thousand horsepower ; with the twelve huge gates operated 
within the house by a water-wheel. And finally there is 
the grand canal system : the receiving canal, stone-walled, 
running from the bulkhead of the dam ; the first or upper 
level canal, extending through the heart of the city for a 
mile and a quarter ; the second level, paralleling the first, 
then, sweeping around, following generally the River bend ; 



4 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 423 

and the third level, carrying its water to many mills in the 
south part of the city along the River bank. The city's 
streets are laid out in relation to the canal system. There 
are public squares, parks for the people, and pleasant resi- 
dential parts in the highlands. 

Chicopee is an older manufacturing centre than Holyoke 
as well as an older settlement. When it was yet the 
Chicopee precinct of Springfield it comprised a succession 
of manufacturing villages along the Chicopee River. Mills 
appeared with the early utilization of the power of the 
Chicopee and its tributaries. Iron-works, established at 
the close of the Revolution, were the earliest industries at 
Chicopee Falls, and to supply the furnace bog ore was 
taken from the neighboring river banks. Following the 
iron work came paper manufacture. The fuller devel- 
opment of the water-power began in the eighteen-twenties 
with the incorporation of a water-power and manu- 
facturing company. Then cotton factories made their 
appearance. In these enterprises were Dwights and Cha- 
pins, associated with other large-minded Springfield and 
Boston men. A little later a concern which had been man- 
ufactm-ing edge-tools in the town of Chelmsford since 1791 
moved to Chicopee Falls, and began making swords for 
the United States government. This was the beginning 
at Chicopee of the interesting works where so much Ameri- 
can statuary has been turned out in bronze and where 
other bronze works of art are made. In the eighteen- 
thirties the manufacture of bronze cannon was begun at 
these works ; in the fifties, machinery for the Springfield 
and Harper's Ferry arsenals. 

Springfield has long been celebrated as the seat of the 
oldest United States Armory, of highly developed indus- 
tries, and of the Springfield Republican. It has been the 



424 Connecticut River 

commercial centre of the Valley in Massachusetts since the 
day of William Pynchon the founder, and has steadily 
maintained its supremacy as the metropolis of inland 
Massachusetts, rivaling Hartford below. It has been pro- 
lific in men of force and intellectual capacity. Its charms 
as a city are its uplands commanding broad views of the 
superb sweep of the River at this point ; wide, shaded 
streets ; noble elms in the older parts ; trim lawns ; a mul- 
titude of comfortable, home-like dwellings ; a generous 
area of parks ; a happy blending of town and country ; 
no dismal tenement blocks ; the blessings of light and air 
open to all, and with them more of the conveniences of 
city life than are to be found in most American cities of 
seventy thousand inhabitants. This is the attractive picture 
which the Repithlican has drawn in one of its descriptive 
articles. Add to it a fringe of romantic outlying country, 
with a rich historical backgroimd, and the sketch is indeed 
that of " a pleasant place in which to visit or to make a 
home." 

The city is built on what was a sandy plain back and 
above the meadows which bordered the River, and on a 
series of terraces terminating in a plateau two hundred 
feet above the River's level, and stretching off for several 
miles to the eastward. The business centre is yet on and 
about the single long street of the original settlement, now 
Main Street, parallel with the River. The older residential 
parts occupy the rising ground above the main street, on 
streets running parallel with it, or following " free and 
pleasing cin-ves " ; and in other directions overlooking the 
Valley. The once beautiful River front is spoiled through 
its occupation by railroad tracks and structures of unlovely 
industries. But all this is now to be reformed through 
the reclamation by the city of the whole front, and its 




X 
'3 



o 
Z 



o 

o 



V 

o 



j 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 423 

transformation into a splendid riverside parkway and 
drive. This really magnificent project involves, among 
other clearances, the shifting of the railroad tracks across 
the River to the west side, and the building of great new 
bridges. 

Foiu- bridges now span the River within the reach of 
two and a half miles. Three of them are highway bridges, 
of which the most pictm-esque and the least convenient is 
the " Old Toll Bridge," — a toll-bridge in name only now. 
The others, modern iron structures, afford the best views 
up and down the River at present to be had at the water 
front. The " Old Toll Bridge " is a successor of the first 
bridge built in the Massachusetts Reach, which was erected 
in 1805 after years of agitation and considerable ridicule 
of the scheme by local wiseheads. " Parson Howard talks 
like a fool," ejaculated one town leader when the minister 
was advocating it in 1787. " Gentlemen, you might as 
well imdertake to bridge the Atlantic," solemnly declared 
another when the project was maturing. A fund to meet 
its cost was raised by a lottery. Its completion was the 
occasion of a great celebration, and on the Sunday follow- 
ing the event Parson Lathrop of West Springfield preached 
a sermon upon it, the pious theme of which was the " con- 
vincing evidence " that the structure suggested of " the 
existence and government of a deity, and also of the 
importance of civil society and of a firm and steady gov- 
ernment." 

Comt square is the historical centre. Here clustered 
the meeting-house, the taverns, the courtrhouse, the stocks, 
and the whipping-post of colonial days. And here was the 
scene of the later outbreaks in the Valley of Shays's Rebel- 
lion, followed shortly after by the " battle " back on Armory 
Hill, which practically overthrew that insurrection. 



426 Connecticut River 

The first of these demonstrations, in September, 1786, 
was directed against the Supreme Judicial Court to prevent 
its sitting, and thereby head off the indictment of insur- 
gent leaders by the grand jury which reported to this 
court. The insurgents were now a little army, well organ- 
ized, and containing many old soldiers of the Revolution. 
Daniel Shays himself, a farmer of Pelham, the town next 
east of Amherst, had been a captain in the Continental 
army, conspicuous for personal bravery at Bunker Hill and 
at Stony Point. The government men were prepared for 
their coming, and when they arrived they were confronted 
by a military force in possession of the court-house, com- 
manded by General William Shepard of Westfield, a Rev- 
olutionary officer of excellent record. These opposing 
forces faced each other for three days, and a conflict was 
averted only through the forbearance of the leaders on 
both sides. Under General Shepard's protection the court 
was enal)led to sit through the three days, but its sessions 
were merely formal. No meeting of the grand jm-y took 
place and consequently no indictments issued. So the 
victory was practically with the insurgents. Meanwhile 
they had executed various " bold measures " before the 
court-house. When a rumor winged among them that 
they would not be permitted to march by the building, 
they annoimced their intention of so doing " forthwith." 
Accordingly, with military precision and muskets loaded 
for action, they marched and countermarched directly 
beneath the court-house windows ; but the government 
men declined to take up their challenge. 

The next demonstration was in December and was 
short and decisive. Shays with other leaders unexpectedly 
marched into the to\%Ti and, assembling several hundred 
malcontents, proceeded to occupy the court-house and post 




a, 

CO 



< 

4-1 

u 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 427 

guards at the entrances, before a body could be organized 
for resistance, thus preventing a session of the court of 
common pleas. Their object effected they marched off. 

The " battle " on Armory Hill came in January. The 
insurgent leaders had determined to concentrate theirforces 
at Springfield and try the issue with the capture of the 
Federal arsenal. Luke Day, a West Springfield leader, 
had collected there a well-drilled force of four hundred 
men ready to cross the River on the ice. At Chicopee was 
Eli Parsons, a Berkshu-e leader, with a similar force. Shays 
was to march from the eastward with the main army of 
twelve hundred men. Anticipating these movements, Gen- 
eral Shepard with eleven hundred militiamen had taken 
possession of the arsenal and had planted a cannon com- 
manding the approaches from the Boston I'oad, — the old 
Bay Path. General Benjamin Lincoln, chief of an army 
recently raised by the state to quell the rebellion, was 
making a forced march up from Worcester over the snowy 
roads with a body of infantry, horse, and artillery. Shays's 
plan was to reach Springfield ahead of Lincoln and seize 
the arsenal before Shepard could be reinforced. The first 
part only of his programme was successfully carried out. 
When he had reached Wilbraham, the town next east of 
Springfield, he despatched a message to Day requesting his 
cooperation in an attack on the next day, the twenty-fifth. 
Day wrote that he would be ready for the twenty-sixth. 
This reply was intercepted with the arrest of the messenger 
and went to Shepard instead of to Shays. Shepard also 
got word of Shays's movements by Asaph King, a deputy 
sheriff, who brought the news from Wilbrahanj, post haste, 
pushing on horseback through the snowdrifts and across 
fields, — the Paul Revere of this rebellion. 

Toward the close of the twenty-fifth. Shays with his 



428 Connecticut River 

army was sighted slowly toiling along the snow-covered 
Boston road. At this time part of Shepard's troops were 
posted back in the village, on the main street, to hold 
Day in check. Shays's army approached in battle array, 
marching in an open column by platoons. Shepard sent 
out messengers to ask " what he was after." The reply 
came back : " Barracks, barracks, he would have, and 
stores." Shepard retorted that " he must purchase them 
dear if he would have them." When within two hundred 
and fifty yards of the arsenal Shays came to a halt. He 
was warned not to march any nearer " on his peril." 
At this the march was instantly resumed. Shays leading his 
men with a confident air, supposing that Day was cooper- 
ating from the west side. Shepard ordered his artillery 
to open fire. The first two shots were aimed to overshoot 
them. Still they pressed on. Then the fire was directed 
straight through the centre of the column, and they broke 
into the utmost confusion. Shays made a gallant but vain 
attempt to rally them. Three lay dead in the snow in 
the road, and one mortally w*anded. The proud army 
retreated precipitately, not stopping till Ludlow was reached, 
ten miles away. On the following day Shays, with his 
force reduced by two hundred who had deserted, succeeded 
in making a junction with Parsons at Chicopee. The next 
day General Lincoln arrived with his troops. Then, 
after only a brief show of opposition, all the insurgent 
forces were routed. Fleeing up the Valley they made 
their hard way to Amherst and thence to Shays's home- 
town of Pelham. Hadley became Lincoln's temporary 
headquarters. The crushing of the rebellion was not fully 
accomplished till some months later, but the insm-gents 
were finally clear of the Valley. Shays after his pardon 
lived peacefully till his death in old age, his home latterly 



Cities of the Massachusetts Reach 429 

being in Sparta, New York. It was the alarm which this 
rebelhon occasioned in the country at large that led Jeffer- 
son to the expression of his theory as to the wholesome- 
ness of periodic revolutions : " Calculate that one rebellion 
in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, it is but 
one for each state in a century and a half. No country 
should be so long without one." 

The Armory and Armory Square are now at the finish 
of a beautiful walk of half a mile up broad State Street 
lined with magnificent trees. Midway are the City Li- 
brary and the Art Museum, admirable institutions nobly 
set ; and along the side street by the Library grounds are 
some houses interesting from their literary associations : 
notably the house in which George Bancroft lived during 
his three years' residence in Springfield (1835-38). The 
arsenal as it appears to-day, with its impressive line of 
buildings set back in handsome grounds, is the growth of a 
century. It developed from the works for repairing arms 
carried on through the Kevolution when Springfield was 
a depot for military stores. 

West Springfield and Agawam, to which the bridges 
across the River lead, and Longmeadow, connected by a 
trolley line, are intimately associated with Springfield, part 
of which they originally were. They remain rural towns of 
much beauty, each with its rich historic background. 



XXVIII 

The Lower Valley. 

Enfield and Suffield at the Connecticut State Line — Windsor Locks and Ware- 
house Point — Site of Pynchon's Warehouse of 1G3G — Ancient Windsor 
to-day and its Landmarlis — Charms of the East-Side Windsors — A Ro- 
mance of the Colony — Roger Wolcott and his Homestead — Birthplace of 
Jonathan Edwards — Timotliy Edwards and his Remarkable Family — 
Modern Hartford : Yet a " Gallant Towne " — Its Historic and Literary 
Landmarks — Trinity College. 

ENFIELD on the east side and Suffield on the west 
side, at the point where the River again narrows, at 
the Connecticut state line, natiu-ally mark the north bound 
of the Lower Valley. Both are charming in situation yet 
markedly unlike in physical features. Enfield's surface is 
generally level above the River; Suffield spreads over a 
succession of broken ridges. Enfield has a busy manu- 
facturing centre in Thompsonville, where are long-estab- 
lished carpet-making works, and where power-presses and 
other important things are produced. It is yet the abiding 
place of the Enfield Shakers, whose society dates back to 
1788, and their neat colony on their own lands in the 
northeast part of the town is unique. But the community 
is fading out, and finis is likely soon to be written to its 
history. Suffield remains principally an agricultural town 
much devoted to tobacco culture. 

Windsor Locks was the Pinemeadow of old "Windsor 
and assumed its present name upon the establishment of 
the Enfield Canal. Now it is a busy manufacturing centre, 
with substantial paper mills, silk mills, and other factories. 
Warehouse Point, connected with Windsor Locks by a 

430 



The Lower Valley 431 

suspension bridge, is within the bounds of East Windsor. 
The place of WiUiam Pynchon's warehouse of 1636 is 
fixed by the local antiquaries as " probably about fifty 
rods below the present ferry landing." 

In old Windsor we find to-day a small town with a 
great past, charming in its maturity. The central village 
preserves the lines of the original settlement. The tree- 
fringed Palisado Green is the historical centre. Here and 
in its neighborhood, on either side of the Farmington River, 
were the home-lots of the pioneer settlers, — Roger Ludlow, 
who lived in his Windsor stone house for five years, and 
then founded Fairfield on the Sound, John Warham, the 
minister, Henry Wolcott, the magistrate and ancestor of 
magistrates, John Mason, the first captain of the colony, 
and the rest. At the mouth of the Farmington is the site 
of the Plymouth Trading House, with the neighboring 
" Plymouth Meadow " still holding the old name. About 
the Green remain a gambrel-roofed mansion or two of the 
period, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu- 
ries, when Windsor merchants were prosperously engaged 
in foreign commerce and the town was a port of entry. 
But Windsor's proudest landmark is the "• Ellsworth man- 
sion," originally the home of Chief -Justice Oliver Ellsworth, 
one of Connecticut's two great revolutionary and constitu- 
tional statesmen. It is on the homestead lot of the emigrant 
Josias Ellsworth, dating back to 1665, and is within the 
tract upon which Francis Stiles attempted to make a foot- 
hold for the " Lords and Gentlemen " in 1655, when the 
Dorchester men elbowed the " Stiles party " off the "' Great 
Meadow." Judge Ellsworth occupied this mansion at the 
height of his fame, and here, with his gracious wife, a 
great-granddaughter of Henry Wolcott, dispensed an " ele- 
gant hospitality." Washington and Lafayette were among 



432 Connecticut River 

his intimate guests. The spectacle of Washington in this 
■ family circle "• delighting the judge's children ... by sing- 
ing to them the ' Darby Ram'," which Dr. Stiles presents 
in a footnote to his A7icient Windsor, reveals another feature 
of the real George Washington. 

East Windsor and South Windsor, on the east side of 
the River, were included in the " Windsor Farmes " of 
early colonial times. South Windsor is especially interest- 
ing from its associations with the Wolcott and the Edwards 
families. Here lived the greater part of his long life of 
eighty-nine years that pictm-e.sque character in Connecticut 
colonial history, Roger Wolcott, born in 1679, who, " never 
a scholar in any school a day " of his life, rose through his 
genius and self-culture to early distinction in affairs, and 
to such achievements in 'belles-lettres as to mark him for 
first place in the line of Everest's Poets of Connecticut. 
And here, in 1703, Jonathan Edwards, the metaphysician, 
was born. 

Roger Wolcott's father, Simon Wolcott, was a pioneer 
in the settlement of " Windsor Farmes," moving across 
from old Windsor, in about 1680, to a domain below the 
mouth of the Scantic River. He was the youngest son of 
Henry the emigrant, and his marriage to Martha Pitkin 
was a romance of the colony. Martha Pitkin was a sister 
of William Pitkin of Hartford, attorney-general and treas- 
urer of the colony. Handsome, accomplished, and twenty- 
two, she had come out from London to visit her brother, 
intending to return. But her beauty and accomplishments 
"put the colony in commotion," and it was resolved that 
she shoidd be detained through a suitable marriage ; the 
"■ stock was too valuable to be parted with." So the wise 
heads gravely set about to discover the most suitable young 
men to pay court to her. The choice, after due delibera- 




o 
o 
o 

a 

o 

H 



> 



o 
U 



4 



The Lower Valley 433 

tion, fell upon Simon Wolcott, then a widower (his first 
wife, a girl of eighteen, had died a month after their mar- 
riage) and living on his own estate in Windsor ; and to the 
joy of the matchmakers he succeeded in securing her hand. 
They were married in 1661. The first fifteen years of the 
married life of the London beauty were passed on a frontier 
farm up the Farmington River, where she bore her husband 
eight children. Then came King Philip's War, when the 
family were driven off by hostile Indians and the farm 
destroyed. At this depressing period, when they were 
back in Windsor village to make a fresh start, Roger, the 
ninth child, was bom. Simon died seven years after the 
move to Windsor Farmes, and two years later Martha 
became the wife of David Clarke, sometime secretary of 
the colony, and returned to old Windsor with her younger 
children. Of her nine Wolcott children seven lived to 
maturity. The daughters all married well, and the sons 
became men of leading, established at the " Farmes " 
on their own estates, along the winding path which devel- 
oped into the broad tree-shaded town " Street." 

Roger Wolcott took up his permanent residence here 
in 1702 upon his marriage to Sarah Drake, his second 
cousin. He was now twenty-three and had been in his 
" own business " for three years. He had learned to read 
English and to write when he was twelve, and at fifteen 
had begun work as a weaver's or clothier's apprentice. 
Within two years after his marriage he had his land 
cleared, his house and farm buildings all up, his farm run- 
ning profitably, and had become a man of affairs in the 
community. His house being finished in the year of the 
Sack of Deerfield, that gruesome scene was depicted among 
its wall " decorations " — a rude painting extending above 
the dark wood wainscot of the " front room." Panels in 



434 Connecticut River 

other rooms displayed paintings of animals and men. Here ' 
Roger and Sarah Wolcott lived " joyfully together " for 
forty-five years, bringing into the world a family of sixteen 
children, of whom thirteen lived full lives, and making 
this house one of the distinguished homes of the Lower 
Valley. Starting into public life when he was twenty- 
eight, Roger Wolcott served successively as town select- 
man, representative in the General Court, councillor, county 
court judge, superior court judge, chief justice on the 
superior bench, and finally governor of the colony. He 
was also a soldier in colonial wars : at thirty-two, in the 
expedition of 1711 to Canada; at sixty-six commander of 
the Connecticut troops in the affair of 1745 against Cape 
Breton ; and major-general, second in command of the 
united colonial forces at the conquest of Louisburg. His 
last years were spent serenely in retirement, largely devoted 
to literary pursuits, at the home of his eldest daughter, 
wife of Captain Roger Newberry, in old Windsor. His nar- fl 
rative and descriptive poem on Connecticut was of this 
period, but his first ventures into verse were of much earlier 
date, his little book of Poetical Meditations appearing in 
1725. 

The " Windsor Farmes " homestead remained for some 
time after Roger Wolcott's day, a landmark on the " Old 
Governor's Road " which led up from the lauding of " Wol- 
cott's Ferry" crossing to the Plymouth Meadow. An old 
stone-walled well is now pointed out as upon its site. 

The Timothy Edwards house, Inrthplace of Jonatlian 
Edwards, stood some distance south of East Windsor Hill. 
It was an unusually substantial dwelling for the time of its 
erection, 1696-97, having been built for Timothy Ed- 
wards by his father, a prospering merchant in Hartford. 
As described in Stoughtou's Windsor Farmes, it was a 



The Lower Valley 435 

two-story structure of fine timber, narrow and long, with a 
porch and door in the middle of the front. It occupied a 
slight eminence from which the land sloped toward a brook 
at the foot of a steeper hill, then crowned with a forest of 
primeval trees. It was in the groves of this hiU that 
Jonathan, the boy of seven or eight, during a period of 
fervid religious revival, built his tent for secret prayer with 
his mates. 

Timothy Edwards was in his way as remarkable a man 
as his son. He was of the third generation from William 
Edwards the founder of the family in America, settled in 
Hartford in 1645, and the next year married to Agnes Spen- 
cer, widow of William Spencer, an earlier settler. Whether 
the father of William Edwards was Richard Edwards, a 
London clergyman of the Established Church in Elizabeth's 
time, as has been assumed, or a clergyman at all, is in 
doubt. All that is definitely known is that his mother, 
when the Widow Anne Edwards, married John Cole in 
England, and that she came out to America with him and 
her son and step-chUdren. William became a merchant in 
Hartford. He died before 1672, leaving only a son, 
Richard. Richard married first Elizabeth Tuthill of New 
Haven. From her he was divorced in 1691, when he mar- 
ried Mary Talcott of Hartford, a daughter of Lieutenant- 
Colonel Talcott. He had six children by each wife. 
Timothy Edwards was his eldest son by Elizabeth Tuthill, 
born in Hartford ia 1669. Upon the cause of the divorce 
of Timothy Edwards's parents light is thrown in Mr. 
Stoughton's Windsor Farmes. The branch of the Tuthill 
(or Tuttle) family from which Elizabeth Tuthill came was 
erratic to the degree of insanity : 

Mrs. Richard Edwards's brother was found by the colonial court 
guilty of murdering a sister, and another sister was found guilty of 



436 Connecticut River 

killing her son. Both of these persons would undoubtedly have been 
found insane by a committee <■ de liinatko inquirendo,'' but a plea of 
insanity was little favored by the early courts, and indeed in his 
case was not urged. The brother was executed, but the sister, 
through the confusion arising at the time in the administration of 
colonial affairs, escaped the penalty of the law, there being in point 
of fact no government that could lawfully execute her, owing to 
trouble growing out of Sir Edmund Andros's administration. 

Timothy Edwards displayed none of the erratic tenden- 
cies of his unfortimate mother, whatever they may have 
been. Some of them, however, are said to have cropped 
out in his youngest daughter, Martha, who married into 
the Tuthill or Tuttle, family; a branch other than her 
grandmother's. She is said to have possessed a " very 
peciUiar disposition," and a " refractory spu-it," and to have 
given her husband, a good honest parson, an " unquiet 
life." Ample explanation of the vigor of the erratic pecu- 
liarities occasionally outcroppmg in the Edwards race, and, 
after their restraint by the strong will of Jonathan Ed- 
wards, renewed in his son Pierpont and his grandson Aaron 
Burr, which have been the subject of ingenious speculation 
by numerous writers, Mr. Stoughtou suggests will be found 
upon physiological groimds by a study of the branch of 
the Tuthill line whose blood was transmitted to the Ed- 
wards line by the union of Richard Edwards and Elizabeth 

Tuthill. ' 

Timothy Edwards's pastorate at the " Windsor Farmes " 
settlement was his first and only one, and lasted sLxty- 
three years. Upon his first preaching as a candidate m 
1694, he married Esther Stoddard, the Northampton par- 
son's' daughter, and granddaughter of John Warham, 
Windsor's first minister. She was a woman of rare intel- 
lectual force and refinement of character. The parsonage 



The Lower Valley 43T 

was built before the meetmg-house, and within it the 
minister's ordination services, in 1698, were held, followed 
by an unusual spectacle — an ordination ball. It remained 
the home of Timothy and Esther Edwards through his 
ministry, ending with his death at eighty-nine. Esther 
Edwards siu"vived him thirteen years, reaching her ninety- 
ninth year. Their children, all born in the parsonage, 
were eleven, all girls save Jonathan, who was the fifth 
child. The girls grew to be exceptionally tall maidens, 
each six feet in height, which led their father to speak of 
them jocularly as his " sixty feet of daughters." 

In this rare household Jonathan Edwards developed 
early a prodigy of learning. All the girls were well 
grounded ia Latin, and several of them in Greek. The par- 
sonage was an educational workshop, and the minister was 
a leader in his generation in promoting the higher educa- 
tion. He is said to have fitted some fifty boys for Yale. 
Sometimes the learned elder daughters assisted him in the 
preparatory school. Jonathan was studying Latin at eight 
years of age, and at thirteen was in Yale. His gradua- 
tion at seventeen with the highest honors testified to the 
thoroughness of the father's training. 

Jonathan Edwards's life in the parsonage practically 
closed with his graduation from college. He began to 
preach in his nineteenth year, and was twenty-four when 
he became established in Northampton, first as a colleague 
of his Grandfather Stoddard. Of his ten sisters three be- 
came ministers' wives. The parsonage remained tiU the 
early nineteenth century. 

Other pleasant old estates of South Windsor still in 
the families who established them, are those of the 
Stoughtons and the Grants. The first Stoughton here was 
Captain Thomas, son of Thomas, a leading man in the Old 



438 Connecticut River 

Windsor settlement. He was a brother-in-law of Timothy 
Edwards, having married Timothy's sister Abigail for his 
second wife. The first Grant here was Matthew, a son of 
Samuel Grant of Old Windsor, the ancestor of General and 
President Grant. Down close to the East Hartford border 
of South Windsor is the birthplace of John Fitch, the 
steamboat inventor ; and in the near neighborhood Eli 
Terry, the originator of the cheap " Yankee clock " indus- 
try of Connecticut, was born. 

The Windsors now are centres of importance in the 
Connecticut tobacco " belt." It is interesting to hear 
that the first cigars made in this country were produced in 
South Windsor, and by a woman, thus reversing the custom 
of the original tobacco growers, the Indians, who held the 
plant too sacred for their women to handle. She was a 
Mrs. Prout, a South Windsor farmer's wife. According to 
the tobacco historian of the United States Census, her 
enterprise was begun in 1801. Soon other farmers' wives 
joined her, and their product was peddled from village to 
village in wagons. The earliest brands in the market and 
lingering for more than half a century were " Long 
Nines," reminiscent of juvenile experiences of old smokers 
of to-day past the fifties. The " Windsor Particular " was 
also an early brand. Later on the " Clear New England 
Cigar" was a familiar Connecticut product. The tobacco 
now grown in the Valley is the wrapper leaf exclusively. 

To modern Hartford fittingly applies Samuel Maverick's 
characterization of the Hartford of the mid-seventeenth 
century. It is now as then " a gallant Towne and many 
rich men in it." Setting forth its advantages in material 
things, one local writer dwells upon its wealth, " greater 
in proportion to its inhabitants than any other city in the 
country." He apparently overlooks the rich Boston sul)urb 



t 



'i; 




The Connecticut State Capitol and Bushnell Park, Hartford. 



I 



The Lower Valley 439 

of Brookline, but that is a town, not a city. Another, 
more engagingly, presents it as a place of " comfortable 
homes, of beautiful parks, of lovely drives," where " wealth, 
comfort, and refinement combine to make life almost ideal 
in its possibilities." The reasonableness of this view im- 
presses itself upon the visitor as he strolls along the cheer- 
ful thoroughfares and observes the city's outward aspect ; 
the more so if it be his pleasure to cross the thresholds of 
some of its comfortable homes. If his approach be by 
railroad, as he reaches the street below the station his eye 
will at once be charmed by an elegant park directly across 
the way, rising symmetrically to a height crowned with 
the ornate state capitol. Along the business streets and 
in the heart of the city he will note the interesting blend 
of old-time and modern architecture. He will find notable 
libraries and literary institutions, with the intellectual 
flavor that attaches to a college town. The city's wealth 
comes through its association with large and varied manu- 
factures, and great insurance interests centering here. Its 
refinement is an inheritance from a succession of cultivated 
generations. 

City Hall Square, the heart of the city, and the older 
streets toward the River front, retain generally the lines of 
the colonial town. Main Street, back from the River and 
running parallel with it, has evolved from the " Road from 
Sentinel Hill to the Palisades," the first town way, origi- 
nally finished with a fort at either end. The Square was 
the first " Meeting-House Yard " or Green, the centre of 
the colonial town. State Street, opening from the east side, 
was the first " Road to the Landing " on the River. Front 
Street, nearer the River front, was the first main travelled 
road connecting Wethersfield, Hartford, and Windsor. 
City Hall Square, with Main Street and its neighborhood 



440 Connecticut River 

below to Park River, comprises the historic ground. Park 
River, — most commonplace of names, — is the " Little 
River," or " The Riveret " of the first settlers, meandering 
through the city and emptying into the Connecticut at the 
Dutchmen's old preserve of Dutch Point. 

City Hall Square is of first interest. On its east side 
stood the little meeting-house before which, in the open air, 
the freemen of the colony adopted that first written consti- 
tution of 1639. The open space where now many lines of 
trolley cars centre, was the popular gathering-place on all 
public occasions in colony times. Here the freemen assem- 
bled yearly to elect the colonial governor and other public 
officers. Here Captain John Mason's Lilliputian army for 
the Pequot War were lined up, and thence marched down 
to the Landing and embarked with Hooker's godspeed. 
Here was the rendezvous of the Connecticut soldiers for 
King Philip's War. Here in 1687 Andros was received 
with much show of courtesy, when, as governor of New 
England, he came with his councillors, his guard, and his 
trumpeters, to demand the colonial charter which Captain 
Joseph Wadsworth afterward hid in the " Charter Oak." 
Here, a half-dozen years later, when Governor Fletcher of 
New York came to assume command of the Connecticut 
militia, assigned him by the crown, the same Captain 
Wadsworth, with the Hartford trainband lined up, defied 
him, drowned his proclamation with the roll of the drums, 
and threatened to " make the sun shine through him " if 
he further interrupted their exercises. In after years here 
were celebrated victories of the French and Indian War 
and of the Revolution. The City Hall, facing the Square, 
a structure of late eighteenth century architecture, was 
originally the State House. Begun in 1794, it was two 
years in building, from slow-coming funds raised in part 



The Lower V^alley 441 

through a lottery. Its chief interest lies in its having been 
the place where the Hartford Convention during the War 
of 1812 assembled. 

In and about the Square are also found landmarks of 
early literary Hartford. Here was the printing office of 
Joel Barlow's weekly gazette, Hie American Mercury, 
begim in 1784, to which the "Hartford Wits," of whom 
he was one, contributed. And Barlow's bookstore, where 
together with books, rum, teas, coffee, pepper, sugars, and 
English goods, were sold his Vision of Columbus, first pub- 
lished in Hartford in 1787, and his Psalm Book, an adap- 
tation of Watts's Version. In near neighborhood was the 
home of John TriunbuU, the author of M'Fingal, the epic 
of the Revolution, and chief of the " Hartford Wits," where 
the club often met. With Trumbull and Barlow contrib- 
uting most to the club's effusions were Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, 
the " bludgeon satirist " ; Richard Alsop, of Middletown, 
poet of gentler pleasantry; Colonel David Humphreys; 
Theodore Dwight, senior; and Dr. Elihu H. Smith, of 
Wethersfield. Their serial political satires, — Tlie An- 
archiad. The Echo, The Political Green House, — produced 
in the period immediately following the Revolution, and 
foremost in its literature, appeared first in the weekly jour- 
nals published here and in New Haven. Near the old 
State House was printed Theodore Dwight senior's Con- 
necticut Mirror, begun in 1809. This was the gazette 
which afterward John G. C. Brainard, " the gentle poet 
of the Connecticut," edited through five years, from 1822 
till shortly before his death at only thirty-two. Slighting 
its politics, he gave it a distinct literary flavor with his 
own writings. On Main Street, a little north of the Square, 
was the office of the Nexo England Review, which the poet 
George D. Prentice first edited, and after him John G. 



442 Connecticut River 

Whittier, whom he most generously introduced to its 
readers. Prentice was Connecticut born, versatile, pol- 
ished, debonair, his fame afterward blooming in Kentucky 
in his Louisville Journal. Whittier came to his editorial 
chair at twenty-two in Quaker homespun fresh from the 
Amesbury farm. With many associates,Whittier made last- 
ing friendships during the less than two years of his Hart- 
ford life, — between 1830 and 1832. Of his circle was 
Frederick A. P. Barnard, then a young instructor in the 
Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, whom, when president 
of Columbia a half-century after, Whittier recalled in his 
dedication of Miriam : 

" The years are many since, in youth and hope, 
Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope 
We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars. 
Now with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars 
From life's hard battle, meeting once again 
We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain." 

Another was Lydia Huntley Sigourney, that most volum- 
inous of early American women writers, then at the height of 
her popvdarity, whose verses and " moral pieces," eventually 
filling more than sixty volumes, were produced before the 
acceptance of women to full fellowship in art and letters. 
This is the keynote of the lines which Whittier Avrote after 
her death in 1865 for the tablet placed by her pew in 
Christ Church, on upper Main Street : 

" She sang alone, ere womanhood had known 
The gift of song which fills the air to-day ; 
Tender and sweet, a music all her own 
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray." 

Unlike Brainard, AVhittier proved an active and indus- 
trious political as well as literary editor, for he was a born 




L 



Old State House, Hartford, now City Hall. 
Place of the sitting of the Hartford Convention during the War of 1S12. 



The Lower Valley 443 

politician. Forty-two of his poems first appeared in the 
Revieio. Of the existing newspapers, the Times is reminis- 
cent of Gideon Welles, who for the first thirty years of his 
long, active life was associated with it as its principal 
political writer. Welles was a native of the Valley, born 
in Glastonbury in 1802, and was in direct line from the 
colonial governor, Thomas Welles. The Courant is most 
pleasantly associated with Charles Dudley Warner, whose 
connection with it, in the ideal dual capacity of proprie- 
tor and editor, covered almost the whole period of his 
essays in literatm-e. 

Below the Square historical landmarks thicken. On 
the east side of Main Street the site of "Zachary Sanford's 
Tavern," where the affair of the charter in 1687 was 
enacted during the night session of Andros debating his 
demand with the Assembly, is covered by a church. The 
place where the Charter Oak stood, on the Governor 
Wyllys homestead lot, is seen on Charter Oak Place, east 
of Main Street, marked by a tablet. The tree survived 
till 1856, when its venerable trunk was prostrated in an 
August gale. It is said to have measured twenty -one feet 
in circumference at a height of seven feet from the ground ; 
and honest Hartfordians aver that twenty-one persons 
could stand together in its great hollow. The charter 
remains, a precious document. The " historical duplicate," 
as the term is, for there were two copies, may be seen 
in the State Library in the capitol, enclosed in a carved 
frame, part of which is of wood of the tree. The " his- 
torical original copy," with the original "charter box," 
is in the Wadsworth Athenasum, a possession of the Con- 
necticut Historical Society. The wood of the oak is 
preserved in countless small articles, and a few large ones. 
Captain Wadsworth, despite his valiant acts, seems 



444 Connecticut River 

afterward to have occasionally fallen under discipline, for 
it is recorded that in 1706 he was fined five shillings for 
" hot headed remarks in court and hasty reflections on 
the judges." 

The castellated front of the Wadsworth Athenaeum 
occupies the site of a famous Hartford house. This was 
the Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth mansion, where Wash- 
ington and Rochambeau had their first conference in 
September, 1780. The Athenaeum was founded through 
the liberality of Colonel Jeremiah's son, Daniel Wadsworth. 
Established more than sixty years ago (1842), its scope 
has expanded to embrace the chief literary institutions of 
the city. Here, now under one roof, are gathered the 
Library and Collections of the Connecticut Historical 
Society (founded in 1825), the Watkinson Library of 
Reference, the Hartford Public Library ; the Hartford Art 
Gallery and Art Society School ; and a Bird Collection of 
the Hartford Scientific Society. The library of the His- 
torical Society ranks with the best in New England in 
early American history, and is the depository of many 
valuable manuscripts of historical material ; while the 
cabinets are rich in objects illustrative of American history 
and prehistoric archaeology. The Watkinson Library 
admirably supplements the Historical Library. It was 
foimded by David Watkinson, a successful merchant, and 
an active member of the Historical Society, who died in 
1857 leaving liberal bequests to these institutions. The 
rooms which they occupy have a delightful bookish atmos- 
phere. On the green in front of the Athenaeum the 
statue of Nathan Hale, the young and comely American 
spy, whose last words of regret that he had but one life to 
give to his country are familiar, or ought to be, to every 
schoolboy, deserves a passing glance. 




■a 
o 



O 



a! 



I 



I 



The Lower Valley 445 

The old Centre Church, nearly opposite the Athenoeum, 
is the lineal descendant of the first meeting-house. It 
dates from 1807, and in its interior design as well as its 
fa9ade preserves the architecture of its day. Back of this 
meeting-house is the biu-ying-ground of colonial times in 
which are the graves of Hooker, and of other governors, 
and a plain central monument to the memory of the first 
settlers. The site of Hooker's house is on Arch Street, 
below the Athenseum. 

In BushneU Park, with its crowning State Capitol, is 
the city's show of out-door art. Observe that this park of 
beautifully undulating territory, the central feature of a 
system of parks of unusual extent and variety for a city 
of Hartford's proportions, is in large part reclaimed from 
an unsightly waste, edged with dismal, unsavory buildings. 
Its creation and development, with its setting of to-day, 
are due to the foresight and perseverance of Horace Bush- 
neU, the great preacher and great citizen of Hartford, for 
whom it was named when he died in 1876; and it stands 
a very useful memorial of his quickening influences in 
civic matters through his forty years of lofty citizenship 
here. The work of the landscape architect here displayed 
is as worthy as that of the sculptor. 

The capitol occupies the original site of Trinity College 
which was removed to make way for it. Trinity's present 
seat is on as sightly a ridge about a mile distant. Here 
its range of buildings, of a refined architecture, occupy 
the side of a beautiful green. It is almost forgotten now 
that Trinity began as Washington College, which grew out 
of warm religious antagonisms and local rivalries when 
Connecticut had two capitals. When in 1823 the charter 
for the college was granted, Hartford celebrated the event 
with bell-ringing, cannon-firing, and bonfires, for it saw in 



446 Connecticut River 

the project a rival to Yale. By a prompt and generous 
subscription to its endowment fund Hartford secured the 
establishment of the institution from other competitors for 
it, and the new Washington College was duly set up as "a 
tower " of defence for the Episcopal Church then centered 
here, against " the inroads of New Haven heresy." It be- 
came Trinity College in 1845, upon petition of the alumni. 
All the antagonisms and rivalries long ago vanished. As 
President Hadley of Yale remarked at the installation of 
President Luther in 1904 : " We breathe to-day an atmos- 
phere which helps toward breadth of view and largeness of 
tolerance ; which makes us seek for points of contact and 
cooperation instead of for points of divergence and antag- 
onism." The Theological Seminary of the Congregation- 
alists, founded a decade after Trinity, remains in the heart 
of the city. 

The walk from Bushnell Park westward up Asylmn 
Hill and along Farmington Avenue, beautified its length 
by handsome trees, is a favorite with many visitors on ac- 
count of the association of this attractive part with the 
latter-day Hartford literary group, notably Harriet Beecher 
StowCj Warner, and Clemens, who dwelt for some years in 
close neighborhood here. The Warner and Clemens places, 
on the avenue, are easily recognized from the frequent 
published descriptions of them, — the Warner house in a 
frame of woodland, the " Mark Twain " house on a knoll 
backed by an oak grove ; and the path between the estates 
worn by the two constant friends. The Stowe place also 
adjoined " Mark Twain's," on the farther side, facing 
Forest Street. Out of Forest Street was the '' rambling 
Gothic cottage " of Isabella Beecher Hooker which Clemens 
first occupied when he came to live in Hartford in 1871. 
Opposite was Warner's earlier home, the " little red-brick 



I 




Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Hartford. 



The Lower Valley 447 

cottage embowered in green," associated with his My 
Summer in a Garden, and Backlog Studies. 

Beyond and westward lies picturesque West Hartford, 
backed by the Talcott mountains, where the neat culture 
of market gardens is the chief industry. Across the River 
East Hartford is given more largely to tobacco-growing. 



XXIX 

Hartford to the Sea 

Down the River by Steamboat — Old Dutch Point — Wethersfield back from 
the Meadows — Tlie Glastonburys — Rocky Hill and Cromwell — Port- 
land and Middletown at the Great Bend — The College City — Wesleyijn 
University and Berkeley Divinity School — John Fiske in Middletown — 
The Straits — The Chatham Hills — Historic Mines — "The Governor's 
Gold Rins" — The Lymes and the Haddams — The Field Family — 
Brainard the Missionary to the Indians — Essex — At the River's Mouth. 

THE steamboats of the " Hartford Line," for lower-river 
landings and by the Sound to New York, sail from 
the site of the ancient Landing in Hartford, at the foot of 
State Street. On the way to the pier one will observe a 
few old warehouses suggestive of the West India trade of 
ships that have passed. But he must imagine the old 
wharves lined with vessels, " often three or four deep," 
when Hartford was the head of sloop navigation ; the 
heaps of hogsheads of sugar, nma, and molasses covering 
them ; the fleet of flatboats loading for the u}>river voyage. 
Quiet now pervades the River front. Occasionally a fussy 
tow-boat or a string of slow-moving freight barges ruffles 
the river surface. A low-cut pleasure steamer for excur- 
sions may enliven the scene ; and gayety is added by trim 
naphtha launches. The Sound steamboat appears quite a 
leviathan among this river-craft. She glides off from her 
dock in the late afternoon with a gentle movement as if 
reluctant to disturb the prevailing serenity, and as gently 
proceeds on the do^\Ti-river course. 

From the vantage of the upper deck the eye takes in 

448 



Hartford to the Sea 449 

both sides of the River as the steamer placidly drops down 
stream. Old Dutch Point appears occupied by the yard 
and ways of the transportation company which operates 
the Hartford Line ; and where meadows were are the 
works of the great Colt manufactory of fire-arms and mur- 
derous guns. Leaving the city behind, the passage soon 
winds between low green banks with spreading meadows 
backed by highland. The steamer feels her way cautiously 
along the narrow channel, and approaches the long bend 
from Wethersfield Cove, on the west side, in Wethersfield, 
and Keeney's Cove, on the east side, in Glastonbury, which 
occupy portions of the old bed of the River in colonial 
times. 

The Wethersfield Landing is one of the oldest on the 
River. The old town lies back from the meadows, a small 
community now, engaged somewhat in manufactures and 
more in agriculture. Its tranquil elm-shaded streets, broad 
greens, and numerous old houses of colonial types are its 
featvu-es that most charm to-day. Visitors a century and 
more ago were particularly impressed with its culture 
of the onion. Brissot de Warville in his Nm Travels in 
the United States of America Performed in 1788, Kendall 
in his Travels through the Northwestern Parts of the United 
States in the Tears 1807 and 1808. and others, made note 
of the vast fields in Wethersfield uniformly covered with 
this pungent bulb, and cultivated almost entirely by women 
and girls. Kendall remarked that "Wethersfield has a 
church built of brick, and strangers are facetiously told that 
it was built with 'onions.' On explanation it is said 
that it was built at the cost of the female part of the com- 
mimity, and out of the profits of then- agriculture." Their 
labor was easy and was performed with feminine nicety. 
For, as Kendall further observed, " the fair onion-growers 



450 Connecticut River 

unite with their industry a laudable care of their beauty ; 
... in the field their dress, which is contrived for protect- 
ing them from the sun, often disguises every lineament of 
the figure." De Warville bore similar testimony, and 
remarked with true Gallic gallantry : " New Haven yields 
not to Wethersfield for the beauty of the fair sex. At 
their balls during the winter it is not rare to see an hund- 
red charming girls adorned with those brilliant complexions 
seldom met with in joumeyings to the South, and dressed 
in elegant simplicity." And the mischievous Peters, in his 
romancing " history " of Connecticut, in 1781 wrote, " It 
is the rule with [Wethersfield] parents to buy annually a 
silk gown for each daughter above the age of seven till she is 
married. The young beauty is obliged in return to weed 
a patch of onions with her own hand." The culture of 
the onion continues, but tobacco, leeks, and garden seeds 
now contend with it for supremacy in the products of the 
Wethersfield farms. Of the colonial mansions still remain- 
ing, chief in interest are the " Webb " and the " Deane " 
houses. The former was "Hospitahty Hall," where met 
the military council of May, 1781, when Washington 
"fixed" with Rochambeau their plan of campaign. The 
assembling of the important personages that comprised 
the council, — Washington, Rochambeau, Generals Knox, 
Duportail, and the Marquis de Cha.stellux, Jonathan Trum- 
bull, Colonel Jeremiah Wadswort h of Hartford, and Colonel 
Samuel B. Webb of Wethersfield and a member of Wash- 
ington's personal staff, — was a great social as well as 
military event in Wethersfield. The sittings took place 
in the large parlor of this mansion. The host of '• Hospi- 
tality Hall " was then Joseph Webb, Colonel Samuel's 
elder brother. The mansion was built by their father, 
Joseph Webb, a prosperous young merchant, in 1752 or 




Wesleyan University—" College Row." 




Hartford to the Sea 451 

1753. He died a few years later, at only thirty-five, and 
his widow married Silas Deane. Four years after the lady 
died, whereupon Deane took a second wife, a granddaughter 
of Governor Gurdon Saltonstall. Then the "' Deane house," 
which Deane had previously erected adjoining the Webb 
place, began its hospitable career. Here Deane was living 
in affluence when he entered public life. How he became 
a confidant of Washington and was sent out as secret 
diplomatist and commercial agent to France is familiar 
history. At that time he was one of the foremost men in 
the Revolutionary cause. Subsequently came his trouble 
and contentions with Arthur Lee, his losses through his 
ill treatment by Congress, and finally his melancholy death 
abroad, " a martyr to the cause of America." Washington 
was a guest at the Deane house in June, 1775, when on 
his way, with General Charles Lee, to take command of 
the army at Cambridge. In the Revolution Wethersfield 
vessels engaged in privateering, and one of the earliest 
privateers in commission was a brigantine built here and 
sent out by Silas Deane' s brother, Barnabas. She carried 
a battery of eight guns and a crew of forty-four men. 

At the end of the long bend the steamer makes the 
Glastonbiu'y Landing. This old town, dating from 1680, 
and taken from Wethersfield' s territory, lies back from the 
River with a fringe of hills. Several of the estates along 
" The Street," lined by noble trees planted before the 
Revolution, are held by lineal descendants of the first set- 
tlers. The founders coming from the neighborhood of 
Glastonbury in England gave the place their old home 
name. It is a town now of varied manufacturing interests, 
with tobacco the chief agricultural staple. The manufac- 
tories utilize the water-power of several brooks that course 
through the town, contributing to its scenic attractions. 



452 Connecticut River 

South Glastonbury, the next landing, at the end of another 
bend of the River, is as fair as the upper village. Here 
Roaring Brook, most picturesque of the town's streams, 
empties into the River. Once the Glastonbiurys were ship- 
building places, and had their part in the West India trade. 
An old-time ferry connects South Glastonbury vpith Rocky 
Hill on the west side, which also was originally a part of 
Wethersfield. 

From the Glastonburys and Rocky Hill the steamboat 
follows the River's graceful windings between green banks, 
in a charming region, with the townships of Cromwell on 
the west side, and Chatham and Portland on the east. 
Then the broad sweep is made to the Portland Landing, 
and to Middletown opposite, at the upper turn of the Great 
Bend. Below Rocky Hill the banks become more perma- 
nent in appearance, showing less of the river's wash than 
above. Cromwell has the hills from which brown stone is 
quarried. Portland is the quarrying place particularly of 
freestone. From the hills here freestone has been taken 
out since early colony days. The first quarry was opened 
on the water's edge where the stone rose high and hung 
shelving over the River. Portland was then a part of the 
territory of Middletown, as were Chatham (from which 
Portland was taken) and Cromwell. Once shipbuilding 
was a gallant industry here as well as quarrying. During 
the Revolution and the War of 1812, the Portland or 
Chatham shipbuilders launched some fine frigates and pri- 
vateers. Later they turned out packets. The first packet 
to sail from New York for Texas was built here in 1836. 
Afterward all the packets of the New York and Galveston 
line, begun in 1847, came out of Portland shipyards. 

As the steamer draws up to the Middletown Landing 
the little city rises pleasantly to view in the twilight. 




■■*y :■ I ift 




O o 






U,Q 



Hartford to the Sea 453 

Beauty of situation is but one of the charms of Middle- 
town. John Fiske's delineation of a decade ago holds good 
to-day. " In the very aspect of these broad, quiet streets 
with their arching trees, their dignified and hospitable, 
sometimes quaint households, we see the sweet domesticity 
of the old New England unimpaired." In the social life 
of the place, as he says, there has always remained " some- 
thing of the courtliness and quiet refinement that marked 
the days of spinning-wheels and knee-buckles." Much of 
this has been due to its institutions of learning, "much 
also to the preservation of old traditions and mental habits 
through sundry strong personalities the saving remnant of 
which the prophet speaks." If the visitor on a radiant 
summer mornuig ascends by gently rising cross-streets 
from Main Street parallel with the River, to High Street 
on the terrace a hundred and sixty feet above, and bends 
his gaze riverward, an enchanting landscape opens to his 
view. An amphitheatre of rare natural beauty spreads 
out before and around him. The River with its graceful 
bend, and broadening in front of the city to perhaps half 
a mile, appears a silvery stream sweeping eastward, and 
presently in a narrowing course, framed in delectable hills. 
And if later one drives northward from the city's centre 
up the Valley, the spectacle which John Fiske has so 
felicitously pictured may be enjoyed : 

" About eight miles north of Middletown as the crow flies, there 
stands an old house of entertainment known as Shipman's Tavern, 
in bygone days a favorite resort of merry sleighing parties, and 
famous for its fragrant mugs of steaming flip. It is now a lonely 
place ; but if you go behind it into the orchard and toil up a hill- 
side among the gnarled fantastic apple-trees, a grade so steep that 
it almost invites one to all fours, you suddenly come upon a scene so 
rare that when beheld for the twentieth time it excites surprise. I 
have seen few sights more entrancing. The land falls abruptly away 



454 Connecticut River 

in a perpendicular precipice, while far below the beautiful River 
flows placidly through long stretches of smiling meadows such as 
Virgil and Dante might have chosen for the Elysian fields." 

Early Middletown comprised two hamlets separated by 
wide stretches of meadows and designated respectively the 
" Lower Houses " and the " Upper Houses." The present 
city, in its central part, constituted the " Lower Houses," 
and the olden part of what is now Cromwell the " Upper 
Houses." These quaint terms held for more than a cen- 
tury and a half from the first settlements, or until 1851, 
when the " Upper Houses " became Cromwell. The point 
where Middletown was begun by the original settlers of 
1650 is near the heart of the present city. The spot is 
seen marked by a rough boulder, a bronze plate in the 
stone's face recording the data of the town's beginnings. 
It overlooks the River and the nearer railroad, and is over- 
shadowed now by a Catholic institution which fronts the 
ancient burying-ground where the Puritan settlers sleep. 
The boulder placed close to the graveyard fence marks the 
Green of the first town centre. In the burying-ground, 
with its memorials of the early settlers, is seen the monu- 
ment to Commodore Macdonough, the " hero of Lake 
Champlain" in the War of 1812, whose associations with 
Middletown were through his marriage and home here 
after his laurels were won. His death occurred at sea. 

Among modern structures on the Main Street a plain 
stone building of official aspect with the sign " Custom 
House " on its front is the relic of Middletown's departed 
commercial importance. At onetime in the latter eighteenth 
century Middletown outran Hartford, and was the principal 
port on the River, much engaged in foreign trade. Early 
in that century in had begun shipbuilding, and the " cheer- 
ful music of the adze and hammer" were heard in its 




X 






Hartford to the Sea 455 

shipyards for long after. At the opening of the Revolution 
it is said that more shipping was owned here than any- 
where else in Connecticut. John Fiske recalls a distinct 
nautical flavor about the place so late as the decade before 
the Civil War. Meanwhile manufacturing had become 
permanently established. By the middle of the nineteenth 
century mills were numerous on the brooks and streams 
tributary to the River, producing various small wares, — 
ingenious and very useful " Yankee notions " peculiar to 
Connecticut manufacture, — with machines and machin- 
ery. Then Middletown, at its bi-centennial, was described 
invitingly as a rural city where " wealth, satisfied with 
objects that impart refinement and rational enjoyment, 
must ever delight to dwell." Now its industrial statistics 
show a broader variety of manufacture, yet it remains the 
wholesome rural city with the added refinements of riper 
years, where all of its community as well as "wealth" 
must find is good to dwell. 

Wesleyan University, which with the Berkeley Divinity 
School gives the city the academic atmosphere, has been 
identified with Middletown from the foundation of the 
institution in 1831, the first established college of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in the country. Its career 
started in the buildings of Captain Partridge's " American 
Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy," which had 
removed to Middletown from Norwich, Vermont, in the 
Upper Valley, in 1824. Designed to " educate the mind 
and body together," under military discipline, the academy 
had given a certain tone to the town, with its soldierly 
instructors and uniformed cadets, many of whom came 
from the South. But after five years it returned to Nor- 
wich, and its buildings were for sale when the projectors 
of Wesleyan were looking about for a location. This 



456 Connecticut River 

opportunity to acquire ready made college halls, together 
with a liberal endowment fund which Middletown citizens 
subscribed, brought the institution here. As time went 
on, and the college expanded to university proportions, 
new buildings were added, and along the broad college 
green on beautiful High Street, College Row arose fair and 
stately as it appears to-day. The Protestant Episcopal 
Berkeley Divinity School, although founded in Hartford, 
has also been identified with Middletown from its estab- 
lishment as a chartered institution. Credit for its exist- 
ence and its growth to its present proportions belongs and 
is generously given to Bishop John Williams (of the Deer- 
field Williams family), fourth bishop of Connecticut, who 
organized it as the theological department of Trinity after 
he had become president of that college in 1849, and who 
was its active head from the beginning till his death in 
1899. The main building, once a commodious mansion 
house, constitutes a dignified central piece to the college 
plant. 

Other mansions pleasantly placed along the River 
banks disappeared or were despoiled with the occupation 
of the water-front by railroads and its consequent trans- 
formation. One of these was the boyhood home of John 
Fiske. From his study window the view that " used to 
range acros.s green pastures to the quiet blue waters " 
became obstructed by an embankment and a coal-wharf. 
This was the house of Fiske's maternal grandmother, 
where he lived from less than a year after his birth in 
Hartford (March, 1842) till at eighteen he entered Harvard 
in the sophomore class. It was in this old family mansion, 
browsing much in its excellent library, that he exhibited 
that marvellous precocity which astonished his tutors : at 
six, taking up the study of Latin ; at seven, reading Caesar, 



Hartford to the Sea 457 

and for entertainment, Rollin, Josephus, and Goldsmith's 
Greece ; at eight, delving into Milton, Bimyan, and Pope, 
having already absorbed all of Shakspere ; at nine, begin- 
ning Greek ; before eleven, devouring more history, Gibbon, 
Robertson, Prescott, and most of Froissart ; in his twelfth 
year, writing from memory "a chronological table from 
B. c. 1000 to A. D. 1820, filling a quarto blank book of sixty 
pages"; by thirteen, taking up mathematics, teaching 
himself music, and singing in the church choir; at fifteen, 
beginning German ; at sixteen, keeping his " jom-nal " in 
Spanish, and reading various other modern languages ; at 
seventeen, beginning Hebrew and dipping into science. 
With all this amazing reading and study, " averaging twelve 
hours daily twelve months in the year, before he was six- 
teen," he was no pedant, but a genuine youth, devoted 
with ardor to out-door sports and life, taking long walks 
and rides in the country round about, and boating on the 
River. He was Edmund Fiske Green till his thirteenth 
year. His father, Edmund Brewster Green, was a native 
of Delaware, and his mother, Mary Fiske (Bound) Green, 
of Middletown. Edmund Brewster Green had been a 
student at Wesleyan, class of 1837, and had met Mary 
Bound in the social life of the town. He became a clever 
journalist, and at one time was private secretary to Henry 
Clay. He died young, at thirty-seven, when editing a 
paper in Panama, in 1852. Edmund Fiske Green became 
John Fiske, by act of the Legislature, when his mother 
married Edwin W. Stoughton, the New York lawyer, of 
the Valley Stoughton family. He took the name of his 
maternal great-grandfather, John Fiske, a man of force 
and character in Middletown, for half a century the town 
clerk. 

The home of the poet Brainard, for a little time in 



458 Connecticut River 

Middletown, was also near the water-front. Brainard came 
to Middletown in 1819 and opened a law office, having 
reluctantly adopted the profession of his father, Judge 
Brainard, of New London. He proved an indifferent 
lawyer, given more to letters than to briefs. Several of 
his minor poems were written in his clientless office on 
Main Street. At length he abandoned his profession, 
when he went up to Hartford to edit the Mirror and 
engage exclusively in the hazardous literary life. 

From Middletown Landing the steamer floats down 
the River, now sweeping eastward beside the Chatham 
hills. As the channel narrows below Middletown and 
takes its wayward course among the shoals, the pilot's 
skill comes into good play. At times the bow of the boat 
seems about to pierce the River's bank on one side and 
the stem to scrape the shore on the other side; but she 
glides onward with the ease of a canoe. About two miles 
out from Middletown Landing the romantic pass of " The 
Straits," where the River cuts boldly through the range 
of hills, is approached, and its gentle aspect changes to 
quite a majestic air. In a deep and narrow channel it 
swiftly flows for a mile's length between rocky banks rising 
to heights of from four hundred to eight hundred feet. 

On the rugged north hills are historic mines, in local- 
ities yet pictiu-esque. One, near the head of The Straits, 
was the " Old Lead Mine " worked by foreigners Ijefore 
the Revolution, and then seized by the Connecticut gov- 
ernment, supplying large quantities of lead for the colony's 
use through the war. Another, beyond and above the end 
of The Straits, was the older and more romantic '• Gov- 
ernor's Gold Ring." This was the place of the early 
investigations of John Winthrop the younger, for mineral 




o 
>^ 

o 
a 
o 



Hartford to the Sea 459 

wealth. Its site is on Great Hill, on The Strait Hills 
range, in the precincts of Cobalt, a village romantically 
set, which takes its name from the old cobalt mines of the 
region, north of Middle Haddam Landing. The " Gov- 
ernor's Gold Ring" was in the reservation which in 1661 
the town of Middletown granted to " our much honoured 
Governor, Mr. John Winthrop," for the encouragement of 
his projects for the discovery of mines and minerals, and 
the setting up of works for their improvement. Here, 
then a lonely and dangerous wilderness, this intrepid colo- 
nial scientist used to I'esort, accompanied only by his ser- 
vant, often spending three weeks at a time in roasting 
ores or assaying metals. Although no " finds " of great 
value rewarded him, the colonists gave the place its glit- 
tering name from their impression that he had actually 
obtained gold sufficient at least to be made into rings. 

Night falls during the passage of The Straits, and the 
remainder of the steamboat's voyage is made in darkness. 
It is enlivened, however, by the play of the steamer's 
searchlight upon the banks as the several landings are 
approached. Thus at intervals a series of pleasant land- 
scapes are thrown up to view as on a canvas. Middle 
Haddam Landing, in Chatham, appears at the end of the 
River's long eastward sweep and its turn southward again. 
Next Rock Landing, in East Haddam, is disclosed in the 
mellow light. Then East Haddam Landing ; and Good- 
speed's, in Haddam ; Hadlyme ; Deep River, in Chester ; 
Hamburgh, in Lyme ; Essex Landing ; Lyme Landing ; 
and finally Saybrook Point. 

The Haddams have various attractions, scenic and his- 
torical. Shipbuilding, from the splendid timber grown 
among the hills, was a brisk industry on their river-fronts 
during and after the Revolution. East Haddam is espe- 



460 Connecticut River 

cially charming in parts. Salmon River coming down 
"from the highland and here dropping into the Connecticut 
beautifies the landscape. This tributary was in the old 
days a rich salmon-fishing place, and so got its name. In 
East Haddam, Nathan Hale, " the American spy," began 
his modest career as a schoolmaster a few years before the 
Revolution, and the little house in which he taught has 
been preserved by the Sons of the Revolution. In old 
Haddam the visitor is directed to a number of interesting 
landmarks. Haddam was the birthplace of David Dudley 
Field and Stephen Johnson Field, justice of the United 
States Supreme Court, the elder of the four remarkable 
Field brothers (Cyrus West Field and the Rev. Henry 
Martyn Field having been born in Stockbridge, in the 
Berkshire hills). Their sister, Emelia, who became the 
wife of an American missionary in Turkey, and the mother 
of another United States Supreme Court judge, Mr. Justice 
Brewer, was also born here. Their father, the Rev. David 
Dudley Field, distinguished in his walk as minister and 
town historian, was minister of the first Haddam chiu-ch 
for many years. Beginning in 1804 he was twice settled 
here, before and after his pastorate in Stockbridge. The 
memory of the family is kept fresh in the town through 
the gift, by Dr. Field's sons, of the Meeting-house Green 
and Field Park adjoining the site of the old church where 
their father preached so long. An earlier minister of the 
Haddam church was the Rev. Aaron Cleveland (or Cleave- 
land), great-great-grandfather of ex-President Cleveland. 
He was the minister from 1739 to 1746. Subsequently 
he went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and while there became 
a Church-of-England man. He obtained Episcopal ordina- 
tion in England, and returning to America under appoint- 
ment as a missionary, he began his labors in Delaware. 




Wesleyan University — Memorial Chapel. 



Hartford to the Sea 461 

He died in Philadelphia in 1757, at the home of his old 
friend, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. He was a man of unusual 
physique, " tall, well proportioned, and powerful." When 
a student at Harvard he outranked his college mates as the 
best swimmer, skater, and wrestler. 

Other pious sons of Haddam were the brothers Brainard 
— David and John — eighteenth century missionaries to 
the Indians. David Brainard was that flame of piety, the 
ardor of whose labors among the Indians, emulating the 
work of John Eliot a century before him, burned out his 
young life in his thirtieth year ; and whose journals, pub- 
lished in 1749 with a memoir by Jonathan Edwards, became 
a classic of missionary literature. The house where he 
was born, in 1718, stood back from the River on an eleva- 
tion commanding a fine prospect ; and near by were the 
beautiful groves and sweet fields where, when a child, 
" sober and inclined to melancholy," he wandered alone, 
and wrestled with his imagined " vileness " for peace with 
an awful God. He became affianced to Jerusha, the 
youngest daughter of Jonathan Edwards, but their union 
was sacrificed to his missionary work. She gave up her 
life in her care of him through his long lingering ilhiess 
of consxmaption, her death occurring scarcely four months 
after his, in her eighteenth year. He died at Jonathan 
Edwards's house in Northampton, in October, 1747, and 
was biu-ied in the old Northampton burying-ground. 
" Eight of the neighboring ministers, and seventeen other 
gentlemen of liberal education, and a great concourse of 
people" attended his funeral, Jonathan Edwards preaching 
the funeral discourse. 

Essex is interesting as an old-time shipbuilding place, 
where war-ships were built in the Revolution, and where 
in the War of 1812 the British cornered a number of 



462 Connecticut River 

American vessels and destroyed them. Boat-building and 
sail-making are still carried on here to some extent, but 
manufacturing long since became the foremost industry. 
The town was a part of Old Saybrook tiU the middle of 
the nineteenth century. 

From Saybrook Point the steamer continues her night- 
voyage out into the Sound and on to New York. The 
traveller confining his jom-neyings to the Valley therefore 
disembarks at this last River landing, and finds shelter for 
the remainder of the night at a Saybrook inn. The next 
morning, instead of leaving the Valley at Saybrook Junc- 
tion, he might well return to Hartford by railroad and 
depart at that central point for the world at large. Thus 
he may make a leisurely finishing trip, with " stop-overs" 
at the pleasant places passed on the down-sail after 
nightfall. 

Thus we have followed the course of the " Beautiful 
River " of which the poet whose name is most closely asso- 
ciated with it sings: 

From that lone lake, the sweetest of the chain 
That links the mountain to the mighty main, 
Fresh from the rock and swelling by the tree, 
Rushing to meet and dare and brave the sea — 
Fair, noble, glorious river ! in thy wave 
The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave ; 
The mountain torrent with its wintry roar, 
Springe from its home and leaps upon thy shore. 

It was Dr. Dwight's observation a hundred years ago, that 
the inhabitants of this Valley then possessed a common 
character, and in all the different states through which it 
extends resembled each other more than their fellow citi- 
zens living on the coast resembled them. This similarity 



■^1 



! 












%;"' 



.If {' 



o 



-li';:'; 



O 

o 



Vtf It' 



Hartford to the Sea 403 

he found to be derived from their descent, their education, 
their local circumstances, and their mutual interests. 
" People," he sagely remarked, " who live on a pleasant 
surface and on a soil fertile and easy of cultivation, usually 
possess softer dispositions and manners . . . than those who 
from inhabiting rougher grounds acquire rougher minds 
and coarser habits. Even the beauty of the scenery . . . 
becomes a source of pride as well as of enjoyment." So 
it appeared that there was no tract in which learning was 
more, and more uniformly, encom'aged, or where sobriety 
and decorum were more generally demanded or exhibited. 
" Steadiness of character, softness of manners, a disposition 
to read, respect for the laws and magistrates, a strong sense 
of liberty blended with a strong sense of the indispensable 
importance of energetic government," were all predominant 
in this region. 

These original traits survive, but not unchanged. The 
smoothing hand of time has passed over both people and 
landscape, softening a rugged feature here and there, 
removing some asperities, replacing with the beauty of 
cultivation the wilder beauty of natvu-e in the rough ; and 
yet leaving both to the inhabitants and to the scenery 
those picturesque qualities which, we hope, will forever 
be associated with the Valley of the Connecticut. 




^ vV ^ S 



Fold-out 
Placeholder 



This fold-out is being digitized, and will be inserted at a 

future date. 




Fold-out 
Placeholder 



This fold-out is being digitized, and will be inserted at a 

future date. 



Index 



Abenakis. See Indian tribes. 

"Abigail," the ship, 29; 30. 

Adams, Deacon, Indian captive, 246; 

John Adams, 407; Samuel Adams, 

394; 407; 415. 
Agawam, 36; 363; 429. Indian name 

of Springfield, .see Springfield. 
Agawam River. See Westfield River. 
Agawams. See Indian tribes. 
AUen, Ethan, 259; 276; 277; 278; 279; 

286; 286; Ira Allen, 279; 283; 284; 

287; 288; 292; 293; 294; 295; 296. 
Alsop, Richard, 441. 
Altarbaenhoot, or Netawaiiute, Indian 

chief, 20; 82. 
American built yachts, the earliest, 

1; 5. 
American democracy, 37; birthplace 

of, 61. 
Amherst, 362; 413; 414; 417; 419. 
Amherst College, 244; 352; 417; 419, 
Amherst, Gen. Jeffrey, 247; 248; 250, 
Ammonoosuc Rivers, 206; 250; 338 

353; 355; 374. 
Amsterdam Trading Company, 9; 10 

11. 
Andros, Sir Edmund, 71; 74; 75; 76 

139; 161; 436; the affair of the Con- 
necticut charter, 440, 443. 
Appalachian chain, 346; 347. 
Appleton, Maj., 117, 123, 124, 125, 

1.30, 135, 137, 140, 143; Thomas 

Gold Appleton, 9. 
Apsley, Alice, see Fenwick, Lady; Sir 

Edward Apaley, 73. 
"Archipelagos," The, 6. 
Arsenal, United States. See Spring- 
field. 



Ashmun family, in Northampton, 409. 

Ashuelot River, 153; 3.58. 

Atherton, Rev. Hope, 154; 156. 

Atkinson, Hodgson, 314, name in Bel- 
lows Falls, 314; Col. Theodore At- 
kinson, 225. 

Atlee, SamuelJ., 286. 

B 

Bailey (or Bayley), Gen. Jacob, 284; 

379. 
Bancroft, George, 34; 70; 116; in 

Nortliampton, 409; in Springfield, 

429. 
Baptiste, Capt., 171; 188. 
Barlow, Joel, 441. 
Barnard family, in Deertield, 396. 
Barnard, Frederick A. P., 442. 
Bamet, 250; 315; proposed head of 

river navigation, 317; surveys for 

canals from, 320; 321; 322; 333; 

334; 337; 354; 378; Scotch settlers 

of, 378. 
Barton River, 348. 
Bates family, iu Northampton, 409. 
Bath, 262; 355; 378. 
" Battle of Bloody Brook." See King 

Philip's War. 
Bay Path, The, 35; outlined, 36; 86; 

143; 427. 
Beaucours, Capt. de, 178. 
Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 47. 
Beecher's Falls, 368. 
Beers, Capt. Richard, in King Philip's 

War, 117; 120; 121; fatal march of, 

121-122; grave of, in Northfield, 

122, 393. 
Beers's Mountain, 122. 
Beers's Plain, 122, 393. 



465 



466 



Connecticut River 



Belcher, Jonathan, governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 206; the "Governor's 
Farm," Chesterfield, 200. 

Bellows Fort, 241. 

Bellows, Gen., Benjamin, 225; 241; 
242; 270; 203; 380; Rev. Henry W. 
Bellows, 380. 

Bellows Falls, 185; 203; 204; 207; 238; 
in the Last French War, 240; canal 
at, 311, 314; 316; 317; 335; 336; 
337; 339; 356; the gorge, 356-357, 
388. 

Bennington, 220; 221; 257; 204; 271; 
273; Vermont Assembly at, 274, 
283, 294, 297-208, 287. 

Bennington Party, The, 257; 258; 204; 
268; 274; 276; 277; 278; 283; 286; 
287; 290; 292; 294; 295; 298. 

Berkeley Divinity School, 453; 455; 
development of, 456. 

Berkshire County, 311; Berkshire 
Hills, 202: 347; 362; 363. 

Bernardstown, 183; first "Falls Fight 
Township," 207; named for Sir 
Francis Bernard, 207; 211. 

Black River, 206; 240; 348; 356; 387. 

Blanchard, Joseph, surveyor, 252; Col. 
Josiah Blanchard, 225; Thomas 
Blanchard, river steamboat builder, 
336. 

"Blessing of the Bay," the ship, 17; 
18; 41. 

Bliss tavern, Haverhill, 381. 

Block, Adriaen, 1; 2; 3; 4; voyage of 
discovery to and up the Connecti- 
cut, 6-8; further explanations of, 
8-9; 10; 11; 12; 82; 84. 

Block Island, 2 ; first named Luisa, 
named for Adriaen Block, 8; 84-88; 
91; 92; 94. 

Block Island Indians, 84; 89; 90; ex- 
pedition against, 91, 92. 

Bloody Brook, 126; 129; 398; Battle 
of, see King Philip's War. 

Bloomfield (first Minehead), 362; 372. 

Blow-me-down Brook, 387. 



Boundary lines between states, Con- 
necticut north bound, 199-200, 362, 
364; Connecticut west bomid, 220, 
221, 254; Massachusetts north 
bound, 362, 389; JIassachusi't ts-New 
Hampshire line, 198, 199, 208, 210, 
211; Massachusetts west bound, 220, 
221, 254; New Hampshire west- 
bound, 220, 254, 255, 288, 289, 291, 
299; New Hampshire-Canada north 
line, 348, 349; New Hampshire-Can- 
ada west line, 361 ; New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, and Canada line, 
351; New Hampshire - Vermont 
line, 277, 279, 282, 299; United 
States-Canada line, 376; Vermont 
Imes, 279, 291, 294, 296; Vermont^ 
Canada line, 368. 

Boynton, Sir Matthew, 67. 

Bradford, William, governor of Ply- 
mouth, 13; 15; 10; 18; 25; 26; 28; 
29. 

Bradford (first Moretown), 299; 354; 
355; 381. 

Bradley, Stephen Rowe, 288. 

Bradstreet, Simon, 43; 44. 

Brainard, John G. C, 441; 442; 457- 
458; 462. 

Brainard, David, missionary to the 
Indians, birthplace in Haddam, 461; 
grave of, in Northampton, 461; his 
brother John, 461. 

Brattle, William, 200; Brattlehorough 
named for, 200. 

Brattlehorough, 83; 171; 183; 198; 
199; 200; 204; 219; conventions at, 
285, 290; 286; 321; 335; 341; 348; 
357; 358; 388; the modern town, 
389-391. 

Brewster's, Col., Hanover Inn, 298. 

Brewster, Jonathan, 24; 25; 26. 

Bridges, the first Hartford bridge, 
306; 309; first across tlie river, 
367 ; 377 ; first in the Massachusetts 
Reach, 425. 

Brodhead, John Romeyne, 11; 62. 



Index 



467 



Brooke, Lord, 20; 68; 69. 
Brookfield, 85; 114; 116; 135; 146; 158. 
Brunswick, 353; 373; 374. 
Bull, Capt. Thomas, 74; 75; 70. 
Burdette, Charles L., 365. 
Burr, Aaron, 47; 397; 436. 
Bushnell, Rev. Horace, 445. 



Cable, George W., 409; 417. 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, colonists 

for river towns from, 24, 33, 34, 36. 
Canaan, 351; 352; 368; 371; 372; 373. 
Canada, 81; 145; 148; 161; captives 

taken to, 164, 16.5, 166-166, 177, 180, 

213, 227, 245, 241; 167; 171; 181; 

185; 189; 193; conquest of, 198, 201, 

252, 379; 199; 204; 205; 213; 241; 

244; proposed union of Vermont 

with, 290; projected canals to, 320, 

322; 347; 348; 353; 367; 368; 369; 

370. 
Canal companies, 311; 312; 313; 314; 

315; 318; 319; 320; 321; 322; 324. 
Canals. See Locks and Canals. 
Canoeing, 337; 384; 418. See Elver 

craft; also. Navigation. 
Canonchet, Indian chief, 142; 146; 

148; fate of, 151-152; 1.53; 158. 
Canonicus, Indian chief, 85; 89. 
Caughnawagas. See Indian tribes. 
Chambly, Mons. de, 191. 
Chambly, 186; 188; 203; 236. 
Champney, J. WeUs, 398. 
Channing, William EUery, 397. 
Chapiu, Deacon Samuel, statue of 

"The Puritan," 420; Heniy and 

Japhet Chapin, 420; Hannah (Cha- 

pin) Sheldon, 423. 
Chapin family in Springfield and Chic- 

opee, 420; 423. 
Chapman, Capt. Robert, 74. 
Charlestown, 201; 207; 208; 209; 210; 

in the Old French War, 212-214; 

named for Sir Charles Knowles, 218; 

219; 223; 225; in the Last French 



War, 227-230, 240, 244, 245; 246 
251; 252; conventions at, 291-293 
Vermont Assembly at, 295, 296, 29' 
298; New Hampshire As.sembly at, 
299; 311; 330; 386; 387; the modern 
town, 388. 

Charter Oak, the, 72; 440; 442; site of, 
443. 

Chastelltix, Marquis de, 450. 

Chatham, 452; war-ships and packets 
built at, 452; 459. 

Chatham hills, 458. 

Cheshire County, 291 ; 295. 

Chester, Deep River Landing, 459. 

Chestei-field, 208; 209; 210; 295; 358; 
388; 390; 391. 

Chesterfield Academy, 391. 

Chicopee, 161; 363; 419; 420; the 
modern city, 423. 

Chicopee River, 311; 363; 423. 

Chittenden, Thomas, governor of Ver- 
mont, 275; 276; 277; 278; 284; 299. 

Christiaensen, Hendrich, Dutch navi- 
gator, 3; 4; 8; 9. 

Churchill, Winston, 387. 

Clap, Rev. Thomas, president of Yale 
College, 78. 

Claremont 318; 356; 386; 387; 388. 

Clarke, David, 433; Martha Pitkin 
(Wolcott) Clarke, see Pitkin, 
Martha. 

Clarksville, 371; named for Benjamin 
Clark, 372. 

Clark's Island, its legend of Capt. 
Kidd, 393. 

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, Hartford 
home of, 446. 

Cleveland, Rev. Aaron, 406-461; an- 
cestor of Grover Cleveland, 460. 

Colebrook, 352; 371; named for Sir 
John Colebrook, 372. 

Clinton, De Witt, governor of New 
York, 321. 

Clinton, George, governor of New 
York, 220; 285; 286; 289. 

Clyde River, 348. , 



468 



Connecticut River 



Cobalt, 459. 

Cogswell, Dr. Joseph Green, 409. 

College Party, The, 257; 258; 259; 
centered in " Dreisden " (Hanover), 
260, 262; 266; addresses of, 262- 
263, 264, 267, 268, 272; 280-282; 
the " United Committees," 263, 266, 
267, 268, 273, 276, 279; the "Protest- 
ing Members," 278, 279, 280; the 
" United Towns," 283, 288; 289; 290; 
291; 293; 294; 295; 297; 298; 299; 
300; 332. 

Cold River, 242; 367. 

Colden, Cadwallader, lieut. -governor 
of New York, 254; 256. 

Cole, Jolin, 435; his wife, Anna (Ed- 
wards) Cole, see Edwards. 

Colonial life in the River towns, 163. 

Columbia (first Cockbum Town, 
named for Sir James Cockbum), 
352; 372; 373. 

Concord, Massachusetts, 158; grantees 
of River townships meeting at, 207. 

Concord, New Hampshire, 207; 224; 
318. 

Connecticut charter, 71; 72; 200; 440; 
443. 

Connecticut Colony, 47, 48-55; 64; 67; 
68; 69; 70; charter for, 71, 72; 79; 
80; 81; in the Pequot wars, 97-112; 
in King Philip's War, 113, 136, 139, 
151, 158, 161; 199-200; 281; 307; 
440; 443. 

Connecticut constitution, 49; 50; 51. 

Connecticut Historical Society, 50; 66; 
448; 444. 

Connecticut lakes, 346; Fourth Lake, 
348-349; Third (or Sophy) Lake, 
349; Second Lake, 349, 360; Firet 
(or Connecticut) Lake, 349, 350, 351, 
358, 367, 368, 369, 371. 

Connecticut "Old Patent," 19; 68; 69; 
71; 72. 

Connecticut Path, the Old, 35. 

Connecticut plantations, provisional 
government for, 45-46; 48. 



Connecticut River, Indian name of, 
Quinnitukqut or Long tidal river, 1 ; 
Dutch name of, lie Versche, or 
Freshwater, 1, 6, 16, 22; English 
name of, Connecticut, 1; called 
"The Beautiful River," 6; discovery 
of, and exploration, by Adriaen 
Block, 6-8; an early colonial high- 
way, 303—309; opened to navigation 
by the Dutch, 304; Dutch occupa- 
tion, 12-13, 56-66; Engli-sh occupa- 
tion, 14-23, 24-37; colonial naviga^ 
tion, 30.3-304; locks and canals, 310- 
324; steamboats and steamboating, 
325-.341; headwaters, 346 (see Con- 
necticut lakes); course through four 
states, 347; area of New Hampshii-e 
and Vermont drained, 347; tribu- 
taries from New Hamp.shire and 
Vermont, 347, 348, 352, 363, 354, 
365, 356, 357, 358, entering in Mas- 
sachusetts, 859, 361, 362, 363, 894, 
in Connecticut, 364, 365, 366; ter- 
race system, 361, 362; the "terrace 
basins" from tlie headwaters to 
Long Island Sound, 352-366; chang- 
es in the river bed, 364-365. 

Connecticut -River Canal Company, 
The, 322. 

Connecticut-River Company, The, 319; 
820; 322; 333. 

Connecticut-River Valley Steam Boat 
Company, 3.38. 

Connecticut, state, 320; 347. See 
Boundaries. 

Connecticut State House, the old, 440, 
441; the new, 72, 864, 443, 445. 

Connecticut Trail, the second, 36. 

Connecticut Valley, topography of, 
345-366; bounding summits, 347; 
the Upper Valley, 198, 199, 203, 
204, 206, 220, 266, 259, 260, 326, 
351, 352, 354, 389, 391; in the Mas- 
sachusetts Reach, 369-363; the "new 
red sandstone" formations, 359-861 ; 
the Lower Valley, 430^47, 448-463. 



Index 



469 



Coos country, The, 186; 203; 220; 

223; 224; 260; 353; the "Garden of 

New England," 363; 373; the Lower 

Coos, 225, 253, 354, 355, 368, 373, 

378, 385; Upper Coos, 225, 253, 

354, 373, 375. 
Continental Congress, 263; 264; 275; 

276; 277; 278; 279; 284; 286; 287; 

288; 289; 294; 295; 296; 297; 298. 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 88; 118; 

Lieut. Thomas Cooper, 134; Lieut. 

William Cooper, 117. 
Cotton, Rev. John, 39; 40; 41; 43. 
Cornish, 260; 273; conventions at, 279, 

280, 282, 283, 293, 294; 297; 356; 

386; 387. 
Courtemanche, Capt., 191. 
Cowass, on the Great Ox-Bow, 179; 

203; 223; 224; 378. 
Cromwell, 365; 462; 464. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 67; 68; 76. 
Cross, James, Indian trader, 206. 
Crown Point, 235; 236; 240; 246; 247; 

248. 
Crown Point Eoad, 24fr-247; 248. 
Cumberland county, 264; 265; 285; 

289; 290. 

D 

Dalton, 351; 363; 864; 377. 

Dalton Mountains, 377. 

Dartmouth, earl of, 256; 383. 

Dartmouth College, established, 256, 
257, 259; 260; 261; first College 
Hall, 262; 264; under the patronage 
of Vermont, 274; the Dartmouth 
controversy, 300; 337; 365; 372; 
373; 380; the college of to-day, 382- 
383; first commencement, in 1771, 
382-383. See College Party; Hano- 
ver; New Connecticut, Wheelock. 

Debehne, Gen., 215; 216; 217. 

Deane, Silas, 450, 451; his brother, 
Barnabas, 451. 

Deerfield, 80; 81; 83; in King Phihp's 
War, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 



125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 136, 138, 
146, 148, 151, 154, 166, 168, 159, 
160; reoccupation of, 162, 167; in 
the French and Indian wars, 164, 
165-166, 167-168, 179, 196, 212, 214; 
sack of in 1704, 164, 168-177, 180, 
191, 192, 200, 203, 204, graves of 
victims of, 197; 198; 208; Pocum- 
tuck, Indian name, 306; 311; 312; 
320; 321; 335; 356; 362; the mod- 
ern town, 395-398; Deerfield Old 
Street, 124, 126, 156, 168, 395, 396, 
398; 414. 

Deerfield Academy, 192; 397. 

Deerfield Mountains, 361 ; 395. 

Deerfield River, 83; 153; 154; 171; 
314; 321; 335; 362; 394; 396. 

Deerfield Valley, 83; 395. 

Delaware River, John Fitch's steam- 
boats on, 326, 326, 328. 

Dennie, "Joe," "the American Addi- 
son," .388-389. 

Dennison, Capt. George, 158; 159 

Dexter, George, 2. 

Dickinson, Reuben, in Ely's insurrec- 
tion, 414. 

Dogs in Indian warfare, 138; a captive 
squaw thrown to, 138-139; the hunt 
sergeant, 139. 

Dorchester, Massachusetts, colonists 
from, 24, 35, 44, 45; controversies 
over the intrusion of on the Ply- 
mouth Meadows,25-29. See Windsor. 

"Dresden" (Hanover), 260; 262; 265; 
268; 273; 277; 283; 284; 288; con- 
ventions at, 298; 382. 

"Dresden statesmen. The," 382. See 
College Party, The. 

Dudley, Joseph, governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 139; 169; 191; Thomas 
Dudley, governer of Massachusetts, 
43; Col. William Dudley, 190, 191. 

Duke of York, 74; grants to, 221, 254. 

Dummer, William, governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, 200; Fort Dummer named 
for, 200; 202. 



470 



Connecticut River 



Dummerston, 199; 219; 358; 388. 

Duportail, Gen. 450. 

Dutch arms, set up at Saybrook Point, 
19; 31. 

Dutch charter of 1614, 9; 10; 11. 

Dutch "House of Hope," The, 19; 21; 
22; 25; 26; 29; 36; 37; fall of, 56- 
66; 82; 86; 303. 

Dutch occupation, 1-13; first trading 
po.st, 15, 19; Indian title, 16, 19; 
25; 42; collisions with the EuglLsh, 
57-62; 93; 97; 101; 440. 

Dutch Point, 440; 449. 

Dutch West India Company, 11; 12; 
18; 19; 20; 22; 6^. 

Duyckink, Evert, 59. 

Dwight, Capt. Henry, 407; Jonathan 
Dwight & Sons, 407; Mary (Ed- 
wards) Dwight, 407, 409; Mehiuble 
(Partridge) Dwight, 407; Judge 
Nathaniel Dwight, 407; Theodore 
Dwight, 407, 441; Col. Timothy 
Dwight, 200, 407; Maj. Timothy 
Dwight, 407, 409; Dr. Timothy 
Dwight (president of Yale), 200, 
346, 350, 351, .365, 403, 404, birth- 
place of, 407, 409, 412, 462. 

Dwight family, in Hatfield, 197, 407; 
in Northampton, 200, 407; in Spring- 
field, 311, 407, 420, 422, 423. 

Dyer, William, 64; 65. 

E 

East Barnet, 377; 378. 

East Haddam, 80; 83; 366; Rock Land- 
ing, 459; East Haddam Landing, 
459; the modem town, 459-460. 

East Hartford, 364; 438; 447. 

East Northfield, 392; 393. 

East Windsor, 329; 364; 431; " Wind- 
sor Farmes," 432; 4.38. 

Eastern Union. See Vermont. 

Edwards, Agnes (Spencer), 435; Anne 
(Edwards) Cole, 435; Elizabeth 
(Tuthill) Edwards, 435; erratic ten- 
dencies of Elizabeth Tuthill and the 



Edwards race, 435-436; Esther 
(Stoddard) Edwards, 436-437; Je- 
nisha Edwards, 461 ; Rev. Jonathan 
Edwards, 406, 407, house of, 409, 
410, pulpit of, 410; birthplace of, 
432, 4.34, 436, 437, 461; Mary (Tal- 
cott) Edwards, 435; Piei-pont Ed- 
wards, 4.36; Richard Edwards, 435, 
436; Rev. Timothy Edwards, house 
of, 4,34-435, 436, 437, sketch of, 436- 
43T, 438; Wilham Edwards, 435. 

Edwards family, in Hartford, 435; in 
Northampton, 407, 409, 410; in 
South Windsor, 434-438. 

Eelkens, Jacob, 12. 

Election sermon, first in Vermont, 51. 

Ellsworth, Josias, 431; Oliver Ells- 
worth, 431; "Ellsworth mansion," 
the, 431-432. 

Ely, Nathaniel, 194; Samuel Ely, see 
Ely's insurrection. 

Ely's insurrection, 411; acts of, in 
Northampton, 412, 413, 414; in 
Springfield, 413; Samuel Ely, the 
leader, 412, 413, 414, 415. 

Emerson, Ralph AValdo, 397. 

Endicott, John, in first Pequot expe- 
dition, 91, 93, 94; sanguinary com- 
mission of, 91. 

Enfield, 80; 81; 199; 4.30; Enfield 
Shakers, 431. 

Enfield Rapids, 7; 26; 83; head of tide 
wafer at, 303; 304; 305; 315; .316; 
317; 319; 322; 323; 334; 336; 364. 

English occupation, 3; 13; 14-23; entry 
of Plymouth men, 17; Bay colony 
expeditions, 17; 18; establishment 
of the Plymouth House, 20, 21 ; 6&. 

"Equivalent Lands," the, 199; 200; 
207; 210. 

Erving, 121; 393; named for John Er- 
ving, 394. 

Essex, 366; 461; war-ships and priva- 
teers built at, 461; 462. 

Everett, Edward, 129, Dr. William 
Everett, 129. 



Index 



471 



Exeter, 260; 261; 263; New Hampshire 
government at, 266, 268, 270, 272. 
275, 279, 282, 284, 287, 291, 296. 

Exeter Party. See New Hampshire 
government, under Exeter. 



Fairlee, 325; Morey's steamboat at, 
330, 332-;533; 381. 

Falls Fight Township. See Bernards- 
town. 

Falls Mountain. See Kilburn Peak. 

Falls River, 154; 361; 394. 

Fallsmen. See River Navigation. 

Farmington (TunxLs) River, 21; 83; 
364; 431; 433. 

Farnsworth, David, Indian captive, 
245; Ebenezer Farnsworth, Indian 
captive, 228, 229, 234, 236, 237, 239. 

Father Raid's War, 198; 201; 203; 
205; 212. 

Fay, Jonas, 294; 296. 

Fenwick, George, 67, 68, 72, house of 
on Say brook Point, 72, 73; his wife. 
Lady Fenwick, 73, tomb of in Say- 
brook, 73; their daughters, Dorothy 
and Elizabeth, 73. 

Ferries, the chain ferry, 309; •' Went- 
worth's Ferry," 246; " Wolcott's 
Ferry," 434; 452. 

Field, Rev. David Dudley, 460; his 
sons, Justice Stephen Johnson, Da- 
vid Dudley, Cyrus West, and Rev 
Henry Martyn, 460, his daughter 
Emelia, wife of Justice Brewer, 
460. 

Field family, in Haddam, 460. 

Fifteen-Miles Falls, 225; 253; 315; 
317; 351; 3.53; 354; 373; 376; from 
the "great eddy" to the "pitch," 
377-378 

Figurative Map, the, from Adriaeii 
Block's data, 9; 10. 

First, or Connecticut, Lake. See Con- 
necticut lakes. 



Fiske, John, 38; 44; 50; 51; 70; 71; 
453; 455; boyhood home and early 
life of in Middletown, 456^57; born 
Edmund Fiske Green, 457; John 
Fiske, senior, 457. 

Fitch, John, inventor of the steamboat, 
birthplace of, 438. See Steamboats. 

Flatboat, the. See River Craft, also 
River Navigation. 

Fletcher, Benjamin, governor of New 
York, 440. 

Florence. See Northampton. 

"Flower of Essex." See Battle of 
Bloody Brook, under King Philip's 
War. 

Flynt, John, in Indian massacre, 240. 

Foote, Mary, Indian captive, 166. 

Fort Bridgman, 238; 241. 

Fort Dummer, 198; 200-201; 204; 205; 
truck-house for Indian trade, 199, 
206, 211; 204; 205; 210; in the Old 
French War, 211, 212, 213; 407. 

Fort Massachusetts, 211; 212; 214. 

Fort " No. 4," 201; in the Old French 
War, 210, 212, 213, 214; remarkable 
defence of, 21.5-218; 224; 225; in 
the Last French War, 228, 229, 245, 
246, 247; 260; 251; 378; 386; site of, 
388. 

Fort Pelham, 211. 

Fort Shirley, 211. 

"Fortune," the ship, 4; 9. 

Fossil footprints, 359-361. 

Fourth Lake. See Connecticut lakes. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 271; 461. 

Franklin County, 394. 

French and Indian Wars, 139; 162; 
.347; 348; 363; 440. See Queen 
Anne's War, Father RaM's War, 
Old French War, Last French War. 

Frontenac, Count, governor of Can- 
ada, 167. 

Frontiers. See New England frontiers. 

Fuller, George, 398. 

" Fundamental Orders of Connecti- 
cut," The, 50. 



472 



Connecticut River 



G 



Gaffield, Benjamin, in Indian mas- 
sacre, 240-241. 
Gallop, Capt. John, in the "earliest 

sea-fight of the nation," 88; 111. 
"Garden of New England. " See Coos 

country. 
Gardiner, Lion, 30; 67; sketch of, 69; 

91; in the Pequot wars, 92, 93, 94, 

95, 97, 99, 100, 109. 
Gardner range, 353; 377. 
General Court, Connecticut, 48; 49; 

50; 51; 59; 61; 65; 66; 75; 76; 96; 

war declared by against the Teciuots, 

97-98; 110; 305. 
General Court, Massachusetts, 41; 43; 

45; 47; 122; 139; 197; 205; 246. 
Gibbons, William, 66. 
Gilbert, John, Indian captive, 153. 
Gill, 369; 360; 361; 362; named for 

lieut. -governor Moses Gill, 394; Riv- 
erside, 395. 
Glastonbury, 136; 365; 443; Keeney's 

Cove, 449; Glastonbury Landing, 

451; the modern town, 451-452. 
Glines, Israel and John, hunters, 853. 
Gloucester County, 264; 265; 266; 

290. 
Glover, Rev. Pelatiah, 133; 135. 
Goffe, William, the "regicide," in 

Hadley, 117-119; 401-402. 
Goffe's, Col. John, regiment, 245; 247; 

379. 
Gomez, Estevan, 2. 
"Governor's Gold Ring," The, 458- 

469. 
Grafton County, 261; 266; 290. 
Grant, Samuel, 438; his son, Matthew, 
438; ancestor of Ulysses S. Grant, 
438. 
Grant family, in Windsor and South 

Windsor, 437; 438. 
Gray Lock, Indian chief, 202; 204; 

212; 248. 
Graylock, mount, 202. 



Great Falls, The. See Bellows Falls, 

and Tui'ner's Falls. 
" Great Falls Fight," The. See King 

Philip's War. 
Great Monadnock, 199. 
Great Ox-Bow, 179; 203; 378; 379; 381. 
Green, Edmund Brewster, 4.57; Ed- 
mund Fiske Green, see Fiske, John. 
Green Mountains, 211; 246; 247; 255; 

257; 258; 264; 265; 288; 289; 290; 

291; 292; 299; 347; 348; 354; 357; 

362; 364; 375. 
"Green Mountain Boys," The, 266; 

286. 
Green River, 154; 156; 182; 198; 362; 

394. 
Greenfield, 154; 100; 181; 182; Green 

River Farms, 198; in the Old French 

War, 212; 311; 321; 336; 341; 359; 

361; 362; the modem town, 394- 

395. 
" Griffin," the ship, 40; 41. 
Grout, Hilkiah, in Indian massacre, 

240-241. 
GuildhaU, 362; 363; 374; 376. 

H 

Haddam, 80; 82; 366; Goodspeed's 
Landing, 459; the modern town, 
460-461. 

Hadley, Arthur T., president of Tale 
College, 446. 

Hadley, 80; 81; 83; in King Philip's 
War, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 
123, 126, 126, 130, 132, 136, 137, 
138, 140, 146, 149, 150, 154, 157, 
158, attack on, 159, 160, 161; 166; 
204; early Hadley boats and boat- 
men, 306; 362, 399; the modern 
town, 400-406; the Porter-Phelps- 
Huntington homestead, 402, 403- 
405; 413; 419. 

Hadley FaUs. See South Hadley 
Falls. 

Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 129; Col. 
Enoch Hale, 295-296; Rev. Enoch 



Index 



473 



Hale, 410; Nathan Hale, statue of, 
444; schoolhouse of in East Haddam, 
460. 

Half-Way Brook, 83. 

Hall's Stream, 351; 367; 371. 

Hampden, John, 20; 68; 69; 76. 

Hanover 257; 258; 259; College Dis- 
trict of called "Dresden," 260; 261; 
262; 265; 268; 298; 337; 339; 354; 
355; 380; 382-385. See Dartmouth 
College, and Dresden. 

Hapgood, Norman, 387. 

Hartford, 15; begun as Newtown, 36, 
40; named, 48; 49; 50; 51; appear- 
ance of in 1639, 57-58; 63; 64; in 
the Pequot wars, 98, 100, 110, 111, 
112, 136, 152, 158, 160; 200; early 
commerce of, 307, 308; transporta- 
tion centre, 310, 315, 316, 318, 319, 
320; steamboating, 325, 330, 334, 
336, 337, 338, 339-341; 364; 401; 
402; 403; 432; 433; 434; 435; the 
" Charter City," 438-447; BushneU 
Park, 439, 445, 446; Wads worth 
Athenjeum, 443, 444; Watkinson 
Library, Hartford Public Library, 
444; 448; 456; 458; 402. See Con- 
necticut Historical Society, Con- 
necticut State House, Hartford 
Theological Seminary, and Trinity 
College. 

Hartford, Vermont, 259; 269; 278; 299; 
373; 385; 386. 

Hartford Convention of 1814, 407; 441. 

Hartford Theological Seminary, 446. 

Hartford treaty of 1650, 63. 

" Hartford Wits," The, 407; 441. 

Hartland, 260; 314; 315; 339; 356; 
386. 

Hastings, John, 238. 

Hatfield, 80; 81; in King PhiUp's war, 
117, 120, 124, 129, 136, 137, 138, 
140, 141, 146, attacks on, 147, 161, 
153, 154, 156, 157 ; captives taken 
to Canada, 165-166; 170; 174; 197; 
201; 204; 208; in the Old French 



War, 212; 362; the modem town, 
399-400; 406; 414; 415. 

Haverhill, 225; 260; 262; 319; 354; 
355; 375; 378; 379; proposed site 
for Dartmouth College, 380 ; Haver- 
hill Comer, 380, 381. 

Haverhill, Massachusetts, settlers 
from, 260; 379. 

Haverhill Academy, 380. 

Hawkes, Maj. John, 247. 

Hawley, Maj. Joseph, 407. 

Hawthome, Nathaniel,' 118. 

Haynes, John, 40; 43; 44; 47; 48; 50; 
51; governor of Connecticut, 57; 59; 
110. 

Hazen, Capt. John, 379. 

Hazlerig, Sir Arthur, 67; 76. 

Henchman, Capt. Samuel, 158; 169; 
160. 

Hendricksen, CorneUs, 9; 12. 

Higginson, Rev. Francis, 73; Rev. 
John Higginson, 73; Stephen Hig- 
ginson, 312; Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, 312. 

Higginson family, 73. 

Hildreth, Rev. Hosea, 396; Richard 
Hildreth, birthplace of, 397. 

Hillhouse, Gen. James, 321. 

Hilton, Martha, 257. 

Hinsdale, 81; 83; 144; 153; 198; 207; 
219; in the Last French War, 238, 
240, 241, 245; 322; 358; 391. 

Hinsdell, Experience, 154; 156. 

Hitchcock, Prof. Charles W., 361; 
Deacon Hitchcock, 397; Dr. Edward 
Hitchcock, 352; 364; 3-59; 360; 397- 
398, 418; Mary (Hoyt) Hitchcock, 
397. 

Holland, Dr. Josiah Gilbert, 312; 406; 
409; 419. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 346; 397; 
Lieut. WUliam Holmes, 20; 110. 

Holyoke, Elizur, 419, 421; Capt. Sam- 
uel Holyoke, 156. 

Holyoke, 312; 341: 363; 419; "Ireland 
Parish," 420; development of the 



474 



Connecticut River 



hydraulic works, 420-423; Holyoke 
Water Power Company, 422; the 
"Paper City," 422. 

Holyoke range, 362. 

Home Circle Clubs, 417. 

Hooker, Isabella (Beecher), 446; Gen. 
Joseph Hooker, birthplace of, 402; 
Rev. Thomas Hooker, journey of 
with his congregation through the 
wilderness, 34-35; in Hartford, 39; 
40; 41; 42; 43; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 
letter of 1638 to John Winthrop, 
senior, 62; 63-5.T; 73; 98; 440; 
grave of, 446; house of, 445. 

Hopkins, Edward, governor of Con- 
necticut, 68, 402; Dr. Lemuel Hop- 
kins, 441. 

Hopkins Academy, 402. 

Horgers, Hans, 4. 

Hosmer, Aaron, 228; 229. 

Housatonic River, 6; 161. 

House of Hope. See Dutch House of 
Hope. 

Howe, Caleb, in Indian massacre, 
240; 241; Jemima Howe, the "Fair 
Captive," 238; 241; 391. 

Howells, Wilham Dean, 390. 

Hoyt, David, Indian captive, 397; (Jen. 
Epaphras, 321, 397; Mary Hoyt, 
175. 

Hubbard, Rev. William, 119; 120; 
125; 167. 

Hudson, Henry, 2; 4. 

Hudson River, 3; 4; 7; 12; 83; 84; 
109; 116; 161; 220; 253; 293; 294; 
296; 320; 321; 325. 

Humphreys, Col. David, 238; 441. 

Hunt, Richard Morris, 390; William 
Morris Hunt, 390. 

Hunters in the Upper Valley, 206. 

Huntington, Arria S., 404; Rev. Dan 
Huntington, 404; 405; Elizabeth 
(Phelps) Huntington, 404; 406; 
Bishop Frederic Dan Huntington, 
402; 403; 404; 405; Joshua H. Hunt- 
ington, 349; 350. 



Hutchinson, Rev. Aaron, 260-270; 
Holmes Hutchinson, 320; Thomas 
Hutchinson, 118; 119; 399. 



Indian deeds, to the Dutch, 16, 19, 
69; to the English, 69, 369. 

Indian River, 348. 

Indian Road, 206, 348. 

Indian Stream, 368; 371. 

"Indian Stream Territory." See 
Pittsburg. 

Indian tribes, Abenakis, 146; 167; 170; 
171; 183; 350; Agawams, 83; 131; 
at the burning of Springfield, 132, 
134, 136, 150; Caughnawagas, 188; 
201; 202; Cooashankes, 350; Five 
Nations, 83; 84; Iroquois, 84; Mac- 
quas, 171; 175; 181; 185; 187; 188; 
204; Mahicans, 7; 83; 84; 145; 161; 
Mohawks, 7; 83; 84; 85; 145; 148; 
155; 159; 161; 199; 203; Mohegans, 
59; 84; 85; 98; 107; conquered Pe- 
quots amalgamated with. 111; 113; 
117; 128; 136; 143; 145; 161; 158; 
159; 383; Narragansetts, 85; 87; 94; 
96; 103; 104; 105; 110; conquered Pe- 
quots amalgamated with. 111; 113; 
116; 142-160; breakup of , 160, 161; 
execution of chiefs of at Boston and 
Plymouth, 162; 165; Nawaas, 7; 82; 
84; Niantics, 84; Nipmucks, 85; 114; 
127; 143; 144; 145; 146; 148; breakup 
of, 160, 161; Nonatucks, 83; Penob- 
scots. 374; Pequots, 7; 8; 14; 15; 19: 
20; 48; 49; 69; 82; 84; 85; 87; 89: 
90; 113; 114; Pocumtucks, 83; 85 
120; 127; 136; 144; 145; 146; 148 
152; breakup of, 157; 161; 166; Po- 
dunks, 83; Quabaugs, 85; St. Fran- 
cis, 186; 212; 224; village of, 236; 
240; destruction of, 247-249; 374; 
378; Sequins, 7; 12; 61; 82; Tunxis, 
83; Wampanoags, 113; 114; 116; 127; 
142; 143; 146; 160; breakup of, 161; 



Index 



475 



Warranokes, 83; 202; Wongimks, 
82. 
Israel's River, 322; named for Israel 
Glines, hunter, 353; 374. 



Jennings, Stephen, 166-167; 191. 

John's Kiver, 3.53; named for John 
Gline.s, hunter, 353; 3.54. 

Johnson, Col. James, 227; 228; 229; 
230; 231; 234; 236; 237; his wife 
Susanna, 227; her " Narrative " of 
the Johnson family in captivity, 
227-239; her birth of a daughter, 
"Captive," during the march to 
Canada, 231-2.32; life after return 
from captivity, 237-239; 244; Cap- 
tive Johnson, 237; 239. 

Johnson family in captivity. Narrative 
of, see Johnson, Susanna ; monu- 
ment to, and their fellow captives, 
239. 

K 

Keep, John, and his wife Sarah, in 
Indian massacre, 150. 

Kellogg, Capt. Josiah, scout, 204. 

Kieft, William, director of New Neth- 
erland, 60; 61; 62; 63. 

Kilbum, John, 209; 210; 225; " Kil- 
burn's Fight," 241-244; Kiiburn 
Peak, named for, 241, 244. 

"Kilburn's Fight," See Kiiburn, 
John. 

Kilbum Peak (first Fall Mountain), 
204; named, 241, 244; 357; 388. 

King Philip (Metacomo), 113, 114; 
precipitation of the war of, 114-116; 
120; 123; 1.30; 131; 1.32; 1.33; 136; 
139; 142; 144; 145; 146; 147; 148; 
158; 160; fate of, 160-161; King 
Philip, an up-country chief, 369. 

" King PhiUp's chair," 130. 

King Philip's War, 81 ; theatre of trans- 
ferred to the Connecticut Valley, 
113; Indians concerned in, 113-116; 



operations in the Valley, 11.3-163; 
Battle of Bloody Brook, 125, 126- 
131, 154, 398; rising of the Narra- 
gansetts, 142-160; Great Falls Fight, 
153-156, 157, 158, 395; fate of the 
tribes involved, 160-161; results to 
the colonists, 162; 165; 166; 202; 
203; 393; 402; 433; 440. 

Kmg WUliam's War, 164; 167. 

King's Island, 364. 

KipUng, Rudyard, 390. 

Knowles, Sir Charles, 218; Charles- 
town named for, 218. 

Knowlton, Luke, 289. 

Knox, Gren. Henry, 450. 



Labaree, Peter, Indian captive, 229; 

230; 232; 233; 235; 236; 237; 239. 
Lafayette, Marquis de, 431. 
Lake Champlain, 186; 202; 203; 206; 

235; 249; 253; 266; .321; 348; 454. 
Lake Memphremagog, 250; 320; 322; 

348. 
Lancaster, 322; 3.53; .374-376; 377; 

378. 
Lancaster, Massachusetts, 116; 144; 

settlers from, 209, 210, 375; 238. 
Lancaster Academy, 376. 
Last French War, 196; 198; 223; 224; 

225; 227-2.51; 386; 408. 
Leamington, 352; 372; 37.3. 
Lebanon, 259; 267; 293; 355; 356; 

373; 385; 386. 
Lebanon, Connecticut, 259; 382. 
Lechford, Thomas, 72. 
Ledyard, John, pioneer navigator of 

the Upper Connecticut, 337; 384- 

385. 
Lee, Gerald Stanley, 418. 
Leverett, John, governor of Massachu- 
setts, 118; 131; 137; 138; 139. 
Leyden hills, 182. 
Little Sugar River, 356. 
Littleton, 377. 



476 



Connecticut River 



Littleton hills, 377. 
Xiviiigstone, Capt. John, 191. 

Loclis and Canals, 310; 311 : first 
■works at South Hadley Falls, 312- 
314; Turner's Falls canal, 314, 321, 
395; Bellows Falls canal, 311, 314, 
336, 337; Water-QueecUe (Sumner's 
Falls) canal, 314, 337, 339; Enfiekl 
canal, 315, 322, 323, 324, 430; river 
life under the canal system, 315- 
316, 317, 318; projects for extending 
the system, 318-322; rival interests, 
319, 320, 321, 322, 323; passing of 
the system, 324. 

Logging, 372. 

Long Island Sound, 6; 7; 8; 17; 64; 
69; 70; 74; 88; 322; 341; 345; 346; 
347; 352; 359; 366; 366; 448; 462. 

Longmeadow, 133; in King Philip's 
War, 149-151; 193; 334; 363; 429. 

Longmeadow Brook, 363. 

"Lords and Gentlemen," The, 19; 20; 
25; 29; 30; 31; 32; 33; 45; 46; 67; 
69; 71; 72; 79; 97; 431. 

Lothrop, Capt. Thomas, 117; 120; 
125; in the Battle of Bloody Brook, 
126-131; faU of, 128. 

" Lost Dauphin of France. " See Wil- 
liams, Eleazar, claim of. 

Lotteries, state, 813-314; 425; 441. 

Ludlow, Roger, 45; 46; 47; 50; 51; 
110, 431. 

Lower Coos. See Coos Country. 

Loudon, Earl of, 247. 

Low, Richard, 66. 

Lunenburg, 353; 374; 376; 378. 

Lunenburg, Massachusetts, settlers 
from, 209; 375. 

Lunenburg range, 375. 

Luther, Flavel S., president of Trinity 
College, 446. 

Lyman, 273. 

Lyman, Capt. Caleb, scout, 179; 203. 

Lyman family, in Northampton, 408; 
409. 

Lyme, Connecticut, 80; 260; 366; Had- 



lyme Landing, 459; Hamburgh 
Landing, 459; Lyme Landing, 459. 

Lyme, New Hampshire, 260; 262; 382. 

Lyon, Mary, 419. 

M 

McCuUock, Henry, of Shays's rebel- 
lion, 415. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 68. 

Macdonough, Commodore Thomas, 
333, 454. 

Mclndoe's Falls, 354. 

Macquas. See Indian Tribes. 

Madockawando, Indian chief, 167. 

Mahicans. See Indian tribes. 

Maidstone, 253; 373; 374. 

Manhattan, 3; 4; 5; 6; 9; 12; 13; 16; 
17; 23; 31; 41; 109. 

Marsh, Col. Joseph, lieut. -governor of 
Vermont, 278. 

Mascomy River, 355. 

Mason, Capt. John, 96; 97; commander 
in the second Pequot expedition, 98; 
sketch of, 98; 100; his plan of cam- 
paign, 101-102; 102-106; his Narra- 
tive quoted, 106-107; 108; 109; 110; 
114; 306; 431; 440. 

Mason Grant and Mason line, 273; 277 
281; 283; 290; 292; 294. 

Massachusetts Agricultural College, 
417. 

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 13; 16; 17; 
20; 24; 26; 32; 33; 34; 35; 37; seces- 
sion of river towns from, 38; 40; ju- 
risdiction over tlie river country, 
46; 46; 47; 48; 51; 52; 64; 73; 80; 81 
87; 90; 96; 109; 110; 115; 117; 137 
143; 145; 149; 150; 151; 158; 166 
169; 199; 211; 225; 226; 246; 267 
281; 285; 287; trading ships of Bay 
men on the river, 304. 

Massachusetts patent, 32; 41; 52; 55. 

Massachusetts Reach, The, 113; '201; 
211; 303; 311; 339; 358-363; 372; 
towns in, 392-429; cities in, 406- 
429; first bridge in, 425. 



Index 



477 



Massasoit, Indian chief, 113. 

Mather, Rev. Cotton, 40; Rev. Eleazer 
Mather, 170, 183, 406, 410, house 
of, 410; Rev. Increase Mather, 119, 
127. 

Maverick, Samuel, 438. 

Mead, Edwin Doak, 390; .391; Elinor 
(Mead) Howells, 390; Larkiu Gold- 
smith Mead, 390; William Ruther- 
ford Mead, 390. 

Mead family in Brattleborough and 
Chestei-field, 390. 

Melvin, Capt. Eleazer, scout, 215. 

Merrimack River, 199; 201; 205; 207; 
213; 247; 262; 318. 

Metacomo. See King Philip. 

Metallak, Indian chief, 350. 

Miantonomo, Indian chief, 85; 89; 
103; 110; 142; 152. 

Middle Haddam, 365; the Landing, 
4.59. 

Middlesex Canal, 318. 

Middletown, 7; 80; 81; Indian name 
of, 82; 307; 333; 360; 365; 404; Mid- 
dletown Landing, 452; 458; the mod- 
ern rural city, 452-468; " Lower 
Houses" and "Upper Hoases," 
454; old-time shipbuilding and com- 
merce of, 454-455; 459. 

Mill River, Northampton, 362, 417, 
418; Mill River, Springfield, 363. 

Miller, Thomas, in Indian massacre, 
134. 

Miller's River, 121; 321; 359; 361; 394. 

Minuit, Peter, director-general of New 
Netherland, 13, 18; 20. 

Missisquoi Bay, 202; 248. 

Mohawk River, 352. 

Mohawks. See Indian tribes. 

Mohegans. See Indian tribes. 

Monadnook, 358. 

Monadnock, Vermont's, 352; 373. 

Monroe, 364; 377. 

Montague, Johannes La, 60. 

Montague, 121; 335; 361; named for 
Capt. William Montague, 395. 



Montigny, Sieur de, 177; 178. 

Montreal, 170, 186; 187; 188; 190; 
216; 236, 237; 239; 247. 

Moody, Dwight Lyman, 392. 

Moor Indian Charity School, 259; 382. 

Moore, Capt., and son, in Indian mas- 
sacre, 245; family of, Indian cap- 
tives, 245. 

Moosilauk, 355; 379. 

Morey, Gen. Israel, 275; 332; Samuel 
Morey, inventor of the steamboat, 
see Steamboats. 

Morris, Gen. Lewis B., 311. 

Moseley, Capt. Samuel, 117; 125; 128; 
129; 130; 137; 138; 139; 140; 146; 
147; 166. 

Mount Adams, 154. 

Mount A.scutney, 231; 355; 356; 373; 
386. 

Mount Bowback, 373. 

Mount Carmel, 367. 

Mount Cuba, 356. 

Mount Hei-mon School, 392. 

Mount Holyoke, 362; 363; 406; 418; 
naming of, 419; 421. 

Mount Holyoke College,;417; 419. 

Mount Prospect, 348. 

Moimt Toby, Indian name of, 361; 
362; 399. 

Mount Tom, 362; 406; 418; naming of, 
419. 

Mount Warner, 403; 

Mystic River, 70; 84; 105. 



N 



Nahant, Massachusetts, visited by 

Adriaen Block, 9; "Cold Roast 

Boston," 10. 
Narragansett Bay, explored by Adriaen 

Block, 8, 102; 107; 116. 
Narragansett cotmtry. The, 94; 100; 

101; 113; 136; 142; 143; 148; 151; 

160. 
Narragansetts. See Indian tribes. 
Navigation. See River Navigation. 



478 



Connecticut River 



Nawaas. See Indian tribes. 

J.'etawanute (or Altarbaenhoot), Ind- 
ian chief, 20. 

Neal, Hubartes, 253. 

New Amsterdam, 13; 67; 63; 64; 304. 

New Connecticut, 258; Dartmouth 
College and state-making, 258-300 
name of adopted for new state, 266 
267 ; Vermont substituted, 268 
290. 

New England colonies, 113; 162. 

New England Confederacy, The. 55. 

New England frontiers, 116. 303. 348, 
349. 

New England, great patent for, 11; 
17. 18; Lords and gentlemen's pat- 
ent. 19. 

New Hampshire Antiquarian Society, 
333. 

New Hampshire, province, 209, bound- 
ary issue with JIassachusetts, 208, 
210, 211; ci.>ntroversy over the New 
Hampshire Grants, 220-223, 253, 
264-256, 257; Provincial Congress, 
260, 261; state government and state- 
making conflicts, 264, 266, 268, 270, 
272, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 
282, 283, 284, 287, 289, 291, 292, 
293, 295, 296, 298, 299, 300; 314; 
315; 320; 322; 347; 370; 372. 

New Hampshire Grants, The, 219; 
controversies over, 220-223. 264- 
257; terms of the township charters, 
263-254; War of the Grants, 255, 
256; schemes for a state on, 257, 
2.58. 259, 260, 264, 272, 273, 279, 
280, 282, 284; 287; 288; 291; 293; 
296: 308. 

New Haven, canal projects of in con- 
nection with the Connecticut, 319; 
320; 321; 322; 323; 359; 390; 460. 

New Haven Colony, 30; 71. 

New London (Pequot) Harbor. 93; 
101; 107; 108; 109; 110. 

New Netherland, 10; 11; 17: 21: 22; 
66; 60; 61; 63; 64; 71. 



New Plymouth, a, on the Connecticut 
planned. 28; 29. 

New York, 2; 6; 19; 69; 71: 139; con- 
troversy over the New Hampshire 
Grants. 220-223; 25.3, 264-2,56; 257 
258; 264; 266; 266; 276; 286; 286: 
287; 288; 289; 290; 291; 292; 293: 
294; 299; 321. 

Newbury, 179; 203; 260; 284; 299; 308; 
318; 355; 378; 379; 380; .381. 

Newbury, Massac h\isetts,settlersf rem, 
260, 379. 

Newbury Seminary, 380. 

Niantics. See Indian tribes. 

Nipmucks. See Indian tribes. 

Niverville, Ensign de, 213. 

Nixon. Capt., 161. 

Nonatucks. See Indian tribes. 

" No. 4." See Fort No. 4 and Charles- 
town. 

North Charlestown, 356. 

Northampton, 80; 83; in King Philip's 
War, 117. 119, 120. 123, 125, 128, 
131, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, attack 
on, 140-147, 151, 154. 157, 168; 177; 
178; 179; 183; 200; 203; 204; in the 
Old French War, 212; boats and 
boatmen of, 305; 311; 312; 319; 320; 
321; 322; 323; 335; 341 ; 360; 362; the 
"Meadow City," 406-418; Ely's 
insurrection and Shays's rebellion, 
411-416; an educational centre, 
417; "Paradise," 418; Florence, 
418; 436; 437; 461. 

Northampton Association of Education 
and Industry, 418. 

Northfield, 80; 81; 83; in King Philip's 
War, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 
124; 126, 127, 131, 136, 138, 144; 
162; 179; 198; 199; 200; 203; 204; 
205; 209; in the Old French War, 
210, 211, 212, 215; 219; 316; 322; 
336; 359; the modern town, 392-393. 

Northfield Seminary, 392. 

Nonhumberlaud, 225; 263; 352; 353; 
373, 374. 



Index 



479 



Norton, Capt. See Stone and Norton. 

Norwich, 259; 205; 260; 289; 299; Ver- 
mont Assembly at, 299; 354; 355; 
382; 385; 455. 

Norwich University, 385. 

"Nothingarians." See Northampton 
Association of Education and Indus- 
try. 

Nulhegan River, 348; 363; 374. 

Nutt, Capt. Samuel, up-river navigator, 
338. 



Occnm, Samson, 388. 

Olcott, Col. Peter, 287; 288; 289. 

Olcott Falls, 385. 

>' Old Albany Road," The, 396, 397. 

"Old French War," The, 196; 210- 

218; cordon of forts, 211; 220; 403. 
Old Lead Mine, The, 458. 
Old Lyme. See Lyme. 
" Old patent of Connecticut," The, 19. 
Old Saybrook. See Saybrook. 
" Old Seth Hapgood," 317. 
Oldham, John, 17; 18; 35; 88; 89; 90. 
Oneko, Indian chief, 151; 152; 158. 
Onrust. See Restless, The. 
Orford, 200; 262; 275; 325; Morey's 

steamboat at, 330; 332; 3.33; 354; 

381. 
Op Dyck, Gysbert, 57; 58; 59; 60; 63. 
Orson, Indian chief, 4. 
Otter Creek, 205; 206; 234; 348. 



Page, David, 375; Dr. William Page, 

296, 311,314. 
Palfrey, John Gorham, 34. 
Parker, Isaac, Indian captive, 245. 
Parkman, Rev. Francis, 397; his son 

Francis Parkman, 397. 
Park River, 364; 440. 
Parmenter, Jason, of Shays's rebellion, 

415. 
Partridge, Col. Samuel, 177; 201; 400; 

406; 407. 



Partridge's, Capt. Alden, military 

school, 385; 455. 
Passacus, Indian chief, 152; 153; 158; 

159. 
Passumpsic River, 348; 354; 377; 378. 
Patrick, Capt, 109. 
Payne, Col. Elisha, 262; 293; 295. 
Payne's, John, tavern, 272. 
Pecowsic Brook, 150; 363. 
Pemigewasset River, 318. 
Pequot River. See Thames River. 
Pequot country, The, 70; 109; 110. 
Pequot Harbor. See New London 

Harbor. 
Pequots. See Indian tribes. 
Pequot Wars, 53; 59; 04; 90; account 
of, 91-112; adoption of war meas- 
ures by the Connecticut Colony, 97- 
98; the "army" from the three 
River towns, 98; route of march 
into the enemy's country, 102-105 
burning of the Indian fort, 105-107 
break-up of the tribe, 109-111; 114 
143; 304; 306; 440. 
Percy Peaks, 373; "land pilot hills," 

375. 
Perry's Stream, .371. 
Peter, Rev. Hugh, 29; 30; 31. 
Peters, Samuel, 357. 
Petensham, Mas-sachusetts, settlers 

from, 375. 
Phelpes (Phelps) William, 46; 51. 
Phelps, Charles, 403; Capt. Davenport 
Phelps, 284; Elizabeth (Porter) 
Phelps, 403; 405. 
Philip of the Wampanoags. See King 
Philip. Philip, Indian spy, 240-243; 
Philip an up-country chief, see 
King Philip. 
Philip's War. See King Philip's War. 
Piermont, 225; 273; 355; 381. 
Pitkin, Martha, 432, her marriage to 
Simon Wolcott " a romance of the 
Colony," 432, 433; WUUam Pitkin, 
432. 
Pittsburg, 367; 368; the original Indian 



480 



Connecticut River 



Stream Territory, an independent 
forest state, 368, 369-371; border 
■war of a single battle, 370-371; 
372. 

Plainfield,'386; 387. 

Plymouth Colony, 1; 12; 13; first move 
of to plant on the Connecticut, 14; 
exploration by Edward Winslow, 
16-16; trading partnerehip proposed 
to the Bay Colony, 16-17; 18; estab- 
lishment on the River, 20-21; con- 
troversy with Dorchester leaders, 
25-29; 98; 110; 113; 115; 149; 151; 
161. 

Plymouth Great Meadow, 25. 

Plymouth Trading House, 20; 21; 22; 
24; 25; 26; 28; 37; 303; site of, 431. 

Plympton, "old sergeant," burned at 
the stake, 166. 

Pococatuck River, 104. 

Pocumtuck (Deerfield), Indian village, 
relief fleet of corn-laden canoes from, 
306. 

Pocumtuck Path, The, 127; 154. 

Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Associa- 
tion, 182; 197; 395; 398. 

Pocumtucks. See Indian tribes. 

Podunk River, 7; 364. 

Podunks. See Indian tribes. 

Polemen. See River Navigation. 

Pomeroy, Gen. Seth, 408. 

Pomeroy family, in Northampton, 408. 

Poole, Capt., 140. 

Porter, Col. Elisha, 413, 414; Elizabeth 
(Pitkin) Porter, 403, 405; Capt. 
Moses Porter, 403, 404. 

Portland, 82; 365; Portland Landing, 
452; the quarries at, 452; old time 
shipbuilding, 452. 

Powers, Capt. Peter, 224. 

'•Praying Indians," The, 115; 116. 

Prentice, George D., 441; 442. 

Prescott, Benjamin, 312. 

Prince, Thomas, 98. 

Provoost, David, 61; 62. 

Putnam, Gen. Israel, 237, 238; Seth 



Putnam, in Indian massacre, 213, 
214. 

Putnam's Monthly, 194; Putnam's 
Magazme, 196. 

Putney, 109; 208; fort at, 210; in the 
Old French War, 212, 213; 219; 285; 
286; 289; 388. 

Pym, John, 20; 67. 

Pynchon, William, 36, 43, 44, 46, 47, 
49, 51, 52, 55, 98, 114, 304, 305, 424, 
431;hisson, Maj. Jolm Pynchon, 114, 
131, 132, 135, 136, 137, house of in 
Springfield, 133, 134, 135; forced 
march of at the burning of Spring- 
field, 135-136, 141, 150, 305, 406. 

Q 

Quaboag River, 363. 
Quaboags. See Indian tribes. 
Quebec, 167; 173; 189; 190; 191; 237. 
Queechee Falls. See Sumner Falls. 
Queeche River, 356. 
Queen Anne's War, 139- 164; 179; 
193; 198; 203. 

R 

Rangers. See Scouting parties. 

" Rebecca," the ship, 34. 

Reed, Thomas, Indian captive, 153. 

" Regicides," The. See GoSe, Wil- 
liam, and Whalley, Edward. 

"Restless," The, Adriaen Block's 
American built yacht, 1; 5; 6; 12. 

Revolution, The, 246; 251; 256; 257 
258; 269; 270; 274; 297; 308; 309 
310; outposts on the River, 374; 379 
381; 395; 407; 408; 411; 429, 444 
450; 451; 452; 465; 458; 469; 461. 

Rhode Island, 8; 64; 66; 71; 110; 114; 
139; 149; 151; 267. 

Rice, John L., 258. 

River craft: the Indian's canoe, 303, 
306; the earliest Dutch ships, 304; 
earliest English ships, 304; the river- 
built flatboat, 303, 306, 306, 307- 



Index 



481 



308; the colonists' canoe, 306; early 
shipbuilding, 306-307 ; lumber rafts, 
308; perfected type of freight-boat, 
316, 323, 324. See Steamboats. 

"Elver gods," 315; 406. 

Elver Indians. See Indian tribes. 
Sachems visit Plymouth and Boston, 
14, 15; exiled sacheoi restored to 
his domain, 20. 

Elver Navigation, by the Indians, 303; 
earliest by white men, 303, 304; 
river-built vessels early engaged in, 
306-307; systems of up-river trans- 
portation, 308; "poling" and pole- 
men, 307-308, 315-316; fallsmen, 
317; 318; 319; freight towing busi- 
ness, 341; packets and steam pro- 
pellers, 341; modem head of navi- 
gation, 341. See, Steamboating, 
Eiver craft, and Elver trade. 

River trade, earliest by the Dutch, 
304; by Plymouth and Bay men, 
304; traffic with the Indians, 305; 
early foreign trade, 307; 308; 310; 
316. 

Eobbins, Thomas, Indian captive, 245. 

Eoaring Brook, 365; 462. 

Rochambeau, Count de, 444; 450. 

Eockingham, 219; 356; 388. 

Eocky Hill, 365; 452. 

Eoesen, Jan Hendricksen, 60. 

Rogers, Maj. Eobert, 246; 247; expe- 
dition of against the St. Francis In- 
dians, 247-251; 353; 375; 378. 

Eogers's Eangers. See Eogers, Maj. 
Eobert. 

Round Island, 378. 

Eouville, Hertel de, 170, 171, 172, 
174, 178, 181, 186, 191; Lieut, de 
Eouville, 171, 17-5. 

Eowlandson, Mary, 144; 158; 393. 

Eussell, Eev. John, 117, house of 
where the " regicides " were con- 
cealed, 118, 401-402, 403; Samuel 
Eussell, 165. 

Ryegate, 354; Scotch settlers of, 378. 



S 



Sabetha River, 365. 

Saint-Castin, Baron de (Jean Vincent), 
167; 168. 

St. Francis Indians. See Indian 
tribes. 

St. Francis Eiver, 201; 224; 348. 

St. Gaudens, Augustus, 387; 420. 

St. Lawrence Eiver, 186; 201; 348. 

Sahnon River, 366; 460. 

Saltonstall, Gurdon, governor of Con- 
necticut, 79, 451; Sir Richard Sal- 
tonstall, 20, 25, 32, 33, 79. 

Sassacus, Indian chief, 85; 87; 93; 99; 
fort of, 104; 109; 110; death of. 111. 

Savage, James, 18; Maj. Thomas Sav- 
age, 144, 146, 149, 150, 151. 

Saxton's Eiver, 205; 357. 

Say and Sele, Lord, 20; 40; 48; 68; 
69; 71; 72. 

Saybrook, 67; named, 69; site of Yale 
College, 76. See Saybrook Fort 
and Saybrook Point. 

Saybrook Collegiate School, 76; 78. 

Saybrook Fort, 31; 33; 34; 37; 54; 
early history of, 67-79; sites of, 74; 
79; in the Pequot wars, 91, 93-101, 
109. 

Saybrook Platform, The, 78-79; first 
book printed in the Connecticut 
Colony, 79. 

Saybrook Point, 19; Dutch arms dis- 
played on, 19; 30; occupied for the 
"Lords and Gentlemen," 31; 67; 72; 
73; 75; 76; 366; 459; 462. 

Scantic River, 7; 340; 364; 432. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 118. 

Scouting parties in French and Indian 
wars, 202-203; 204-205; 214; 215; 
246, 247-251. 

Sea-fight, earliest of the nation, 8&-89. 

Secession of the river towns from Mas- 
sachusetts, 37; 38; 48; 51. 

Second Lake. See Connecticut lakes. 

Sequasson, Indian chief, 59. 



482 



Connecticut River 



Sequins. See Indian tribes. 

Shackspeer, Uzackaby, in Indian mas- 
sacre, LSI. 

Shays's Rebellion, 400; sciieme of, 
411-412; acts of in Northampton, 
415-416, in Springfield, 425-428; 
leaders in, Daniel Shays, 426, 427, 
428, Luke Day, 427, 428, Eli Par- 
sons, 427, 428; leaders against, Gen. 
William Shepard, 426, 427, 428, 
Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, 427, 428; 
429. 

Sheldon, George, 83, 85, 118, 120, 124, 
127, 130, 144, 170, 171, 175, 180, 
395, 397; Hannah (Chapin) Sheldon, 
170, 174, 191, 197, 420; Ensign John 
Sheldon, house of in the " Sack of 
Deerfield," 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 
175, 192, 396, expeditions of for re- 
demption of captives, 191, 197; John, 
son of Ensign John, 170, 174, 175. 

Sheldon family in Deerfield, 170. 

Sheldon Rock, 321. 

Shirley, William, governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 216; 224. 

Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 129; 442. 

Sims's Stream, 352. 

Slade, William, 290. 

Sluys, Hans den, 19; 31. 

Smead's Island, 155; 160. 

Smith, Austin, 400; Dr. Elihu Smith, 
441; Capt. John Smith, 10; 11 ; Oliver 
Smith, 400; Sophia Smith, 400, 
417. 

Smith family in Hatfield, 400. 

Smith Academy, 400. 

Smith Charities, 400. 

Smith College, 400; 406; 408; 416- 
417; 418. 

Smyth, Henry, 40. 

Sorel River, 186. 

South Deerfield, 126; 129; 362; 398. 

South Glastonbury 365; the Landing, 
452. 

South Hadley, 341; 362; 363; 413; 
417; 419. 



South Hadley Falls, 83; 311; 312-513; 
363; 420-422. 

South Lancaster, 377. 

South Vernon, 391. 

South Windsor, 7; 82; 364; 432; 
"Windsor Earmes," 432; home of 
Roger Wolcott, 432; birthplace of 
Jonathan Edwards, 432, 434-435; 
birthplace of John Fitch, 438; birth- 
place of Eli Terry, 438. 

Sowheag, Indian chief, 59; 82. 

Springfield, 18; 36; 46; 47; 49; 51; 52; 
55; 80; 81; 83; 98; 114; 116; in King 
Philip's War, 117, 131, burning of, 
132-137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 149, 
150, 151, 164, 156, 170, 179; early 
navigation to, 303, 304, 305, 310; 
311; 312; 317; 322; 323; 334; 337; 
3.38; 363; 388; 406; 407; Ely's insur- 
rection, 413, 414, 415; 419; 420; 423; 
the " Queen City," 423-429; Shays's 
rebellion, 425-429; Art Museum, 
429; City Library, 305, 429; United 
States Arsenal, 312, 363, 423, 427, 
428, 429. 

Springfield, Vermont, 206; 246; 311; 
348; 356; 386; 387; 388. 

Squakheags. See Indian tribes. 

Squakheags' country, The, 122; Indian 
rendezvoas in King Philip's War, 
144-148, 161, 160. 

Stark, Gen. John, 246; 247; Capt. 
WiUiam Stark, 246. 

Steamboats, 322; 324; Connecticut 
Valley inventors of before Fulton: 
John Fitch, 325, 326-329, Samuel 
Morey, 325, 326, 329-333; trial trips 
of Morey's steamboat on the River, 
330, 382; fate of his boat, 332-333; 
first steamboats in regular service, 
333; attempts at up-river navigation, 
322, 333-339; a song of triumph, 
338; relays of steamboats betveeen 
Hartford and Wells River, 338-339; 
Springfield and Hartford line, 337, 
339-341; Dickens's "voyage" on 



Index 



483 



the " Massachusetts," 340 ; the 

" Hartford Line," 341, 448, 449. 
Stebbins, Asahel, in Indian massacre, 

245, his wife an Indian captive, 245; 

Sergt. Benoni Stebbins, 166, house 

of in the "Sack of Deerfield," 168, 

174-175,395,396; Edward Stebbins, 

153. 
Steele, John, 46. 
Stevens, Capt. Phinehas, the "hero of 

No. 4," 212; 213; 214; his remark- 

ble defence of No. 4, 215-218; 224; 

228; 2.30. 
Stewartstown, 345; 351; 371; named 

for John Stewarts, 372; 373. 
Stiles, Dr. Ezra, president of Tale 

College, 119; Francis Stiles, 25, 29, 

431; Dr. Henry R. Stiles, 432. 
StUes Party, The, 29; 32. 
Stockwell, Quintin, 124; 165; 166; 167. 
Stockwell Fort, 124; 125; 165. 
Stoddard, Anthony, 200; Esther 

(Mather) Stoddard, 183, 410; Col. 

John Stoddard, 169, 193, 200, 212, 

407, house of, 409-410; Rev. Solomon 

Stoddard, 119; 139, 169, 200, 406, 

house of, 409-410, 436, 437. 
Stone, Rev. Samuel, 35; 40; 41; 48; 

chaplain in the second Pequot war, 

98, 101. 
Stone and Norton, Capts., massacre 

of, 86; 87; 91; 93. 
Stoughton, Abigail (Edwards), 438; 

Edwin W. Stoughton, 457; Capt. 

Israel Stoughton, 110, 114; John A. 

Stoughton, 434, 435, 436; Mary 

(Fiske) Green Stoughton, 457; 

Thomas Stoughton, 437, his son 

Thomas, 437. 
Stoughton family in the Windsors, 

437; 4.38; 457. 
Stoughton's Brook, 304. 
Stowe, Harriet Beeeher, 446. 
Strait Hills range, 459. 
Straits, The, 365; 458; 459. 
Stratford, 373; named, 374. 



Strong, Caleb, governor of Massachu- 
setts, 407. 

Stuyvesant, Peter, director of New 
Netherlands, 03; 64. 

Suffield, 80; 81; 199; 4.30. 

Sugar River, 318; 356; 387. 

Sugarloaf, 120; 130; 362; 398; 399. 

Sullivan, Gen. John, 289; 299. 

Sumner's Falls, 251; 314; 337; 339; 
356. 

Sunderland, 121; 361; 395; named for 
Earl of Sunderland, 399. 

Swain, Capt. Jeremiah, 168; 159; 160; 
161. 

Swaine, William, 46. 

Swift River, 363. 

Symes, Capt. William, 223. 



Talcott, Lieut.-col., 435; Major John 
Talcott, 120, 158, 159, 160; John 
Talcott, 48. 

Talcott range, 364; 447. 

Tattoebum, Indian chief, 19; 20; 82. 

Taylor, Capt. John, 178. 

Terry, Eli, 438. 

Thames (Pequot) River, 7; 8; 84; 93; 
100; 112. 

Thetford, 260; 265; 299; 382. 

Third Lake. See Connecticut lakes. 

Thomas, Rowland, 419. 

Thompsonville, 317 ; 430. 

Ticonderoga, 237 ; 266 ; 270 ; 271. 

"Tiger," the ship, 4; 11. 

Tilly, Joseph, tortured by the Indians, 
95. 

Tobacco culture, 399; 430; 438; first 
American made cigars, 447, 450, 451. 

Toto, friendly Indian, 133; 135. 

Trails, between Canada and New Eng- 
land, .347; 348; 353 ; the old Indian 
trail to Maine, 374. 

Treat, Maj., 114; 117; 122; 123; 
128 ; 130 ; 132 ; 133 ; 135 ; 136 ; 
140; 143; 146; 147; 151. 



484 



Connecticut River 



Trinity College, 445-446 ; 456. 

Trumbull, Benjamin, 34, 70 ; James 
Sussell Trumbull, 410 ; John Trum- 
bull, 441 ; Jonathan Trumbull, 450 ; 
J. Hammond Trumbull, 50, 52, 82, 
84. 

Tunxis. See Indian tribes. 

Tunxis River. See Farmington River. 

Turner, Capt. William, 146 ; 147 ; 151 ; 
153-156 ; 395 ; grave of, 156 ; Tur. 
ner's Falls named for, 1.56 ; \!>9. 

Turner, Praisever, in Indian massacre, 
131. 

Turner's Falls, Indian lishing place, 
153 ; scene of the " Great Falls 
Fight," 153-156; 160; locking of, 
311; 314; 328; 338; 339; 361; 365. 

Tweenhuy.sen, Lambrecht van, II. 

Twichell, Daniel, in Indian massacre, 
240. 

Twichell's Rock, 240. 

Tyler, Royal, 389. 



U 



Uncas, Indian chief, 69 ; 84 ; 85 ; 98 ; 
99 ; 107 ; 113; Uncas, son of Uncas, 
117 ; 128 ; 152. 

Underbill, Capt. John, 64 ; seizure of 
the Dutch House of Hope by, 64-65 ; 
91; 96; 97; 99; 100; 105; 107; 
108; 109; 114. 

United Colonies, 16 ; 61 ; 63 ; 64 ; 142. 

United Committees. See College Party. 

United Inhabitants of the Indian 
Stream Territory. See Pittsburg. 

Upper River Settlement, 198 ; 205 ; 
206 ; 207 ; terms of early township 
grants, 208; 209; 218; 219; on 
the "New Hampshire Grants," 219, 
220, 22.3, 252, 253, 255, 256; system 
of local government, 257 ; 250 ; 260 ; 
380. 

Upper Coos. See Coos country. 



Valentine, Indian chief, 4. 

Vermont, 81 ; 84 ; 200 ; 220 ; 253 ; 
268 ; the state set up at Windsor, 
269-271 ; Vermont Assembly, 273, 
274, 276, 278, 279, 280, 282, 283, 
293-294, 205, 299, 320; " Ea.stern 
Union " and " Western Union," 
294, 206, 297, 298 ; 322; 323 ; 347 ; 
348; 351; 353; "Constitution House" 
at Windsor, .386. 

Vermont Historical Society, 270. 

Vernon, 81; 83; 144; 183; 108; in the 
Old French War, 211; 322; 358; 391. 

Van Curler, Jacob, 21; 23; 59. 

Van Twiller, governor of New Nether- 
laud, 17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23. 

Vane, Sir Henry, 29; 31; 47. 

Vries, David Pieterzen de, 56; 56-58; 
60. 

Verrazzano, Giovanni de, 2 ; 8. 

Vaudreuil, Marquis de, governor of 
Canada, 164; 168; 170; 171; 178; 191; 
201; 205; 214; Gen. Rigaudde Vau- 
dreuil, 214. 

W 

Wadsworth, Daniel, 444; Col. Jere- 
miah Wadsworth, 444 ; 450 ; Capt. 
Joseph Wadsworth, 440; 443. 

Waite, Benjamin, 154; 156; knightly 
quest of vrith Stephen Jennings, 166- 
167 ; 101. 

Wait's River, 355. 

Walker's, Abel, tavern, 290. 

Walpole, 208 ; 209; 210; 219; 225; 
238 ; in the Last French War, 210, 
240, 241-345 ; convention at, 291 ; 
293 ; 296 ; 367 ; 388 ; the Walpole 
wits, 388-380. 

Wampanoags. See Indian tribes. 

Wantastequat (or West) mountain, 204; 
209 ; 357 ; 358 ; 380. 

Wapegwoot, Indian chief, 84 ; 85. 



Index 



485 



War of 1812, 407 ; 441 ; 452 ; 454 ; 

461-462. 
Ward, Andrew, 46 ; 47. 
Ware River, 363. 
Warehoi;se Point, 304 ; 306 ; 306; 307; 

317 ; 334 ; 364 ; 430 ; 431. 
Warham, Rev. John, 431 ; 436 ; Rev. 

William Warham, 192. 
Warranokes. See Indian tribes. 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 443; 446; 

Col. Seth Warner, 270; 271. 
Washington, George, 297 ; at Windsor, 

431 ; at Hartford, 444 ; at Wethers- 
field, 450, 451. 
Washington College. See Trinity 

College. 
Waterford, 377. 
Watertovjfn, Massachusetts, colonists 

from, 24 ; 25 ; 35 ; 44 ; 45 ; 117. 
Watkinson, David, 444. 
Weare, Meshech, president of New 

Hampshire, 204 ; 266 ; 267 ; 275 ; 

276 ; 277 ; 278 ; 282 ; 283. 
Webb family in Wethersfield, 450. 
Webster, Daniel, 300 ; 383 ; John 

Webster, 51. 
Welles, Gideon, 443 ; birthplace of, 

443 ; Thomas Welles, 48 ; 51 ; 443 ; 

445. 
Wells, John, 191; Capt. Jonathan 

Wells, 176; 176; 177; Jonathan 

Wells, 156; Capt. Thomas Wells, 

scout, 204; 207. 
Wells River, 308 ; 316 ; 319 ; 355. 
Wells River Junction, 308 ; 373 ; 378. 
Wells River Village, 308 ; 316; 317 ; 

318 ; 338. 

Wentworth, Benning, governor of 
New Hampshire, 209 ; 219 ; 220 ; 
controversy over the "New Hamp- 
shire Grants," 220-223; 254-256 
223 ; 224 ; 246 ; 252 ; 263 ; 254 
255 ; 266 ; 258 ; 260 ; 372 ; 387 
John Wentworth, governor of New 
Hampshire, 256 ; 372 ; 383. 

Wequogan, Indian chief, 132; 134; 135. 



Wesleyan University, 463 ; 455-456 ; 
457. 

West Hartford, 447. 

West River, 171 ; 183 ; 184 ; 205 ; 
348 ; 368. 

West Springfield, 363; 420; 425; 427; 
429. 

West Stewartstown, 352 ; 368. 

Western Union. See Vermont. 

Westfield (Agawam) River, 83 ; 202; 
383. 

Westminster, 208; 210; 219; conven- 
tions at, 264, 266 ; state of New 
Connecticut set up at, 266 ; 286 ; 
288 ; Vermont Assembly at, 299, 357, 
388. 

Westmoreland, 208 ; 212 ; 219 ; 388. 

Weslwood, William, 46; 48. 

Wethersfield, 25; 37; 38; 46; named, 
48; 51; 78; 80; 82; 88; 95; 97; in 
the Pequot Wars, 98 ; 101 ; 209 ; 
364; 365; 439; Wethersfield Cove, 
449 ; the modern town, 449-451 ; 
travellers' notes on its old-time cul- 
ture of the onion, 449-450; 450; 451. 

Wethersfield, Vermont, 231; 232; 355; 
356; 386. 

Whalley, Edward, the "regicide," 
401-402. 

Whately, 399; named for Thomas 
Whatfily, 399. 

Wheelock, Rev. Eleazer, founder of 
Dartmouth College, 256; 259; 260 ; 
261; 262; 266; 274; 300; 380; 382; 
383; his son, John Wheelock, second 
president of Dartmouth College, 261 ; 
265; 279. 

Whetstone Brook, 358. 

White Mountains, 206; 264; 347; 353; 
355; 375; 378. 

White River, 186; 348; 356. 

White River Junction, 186; 315; 338; 
339; 355; 373; 381; 386. 

White River Falls, 251; 356. 

Whiting, Charles G., 399. 

Whitmarsh, Samuel, 418. 



486 



Connecticut Riv^er 



Whittier, John G.,442; 443, 

Whitney, Clarissa (James) 408; Prof. 
Henry Mitchell Whitney, 408; 
James Lyman Whitney, 408; Josiah 
Dwight Whitney, 407, 408, 400; 
Prof. Josiah Dwight Whitney, 408; 
Maria Whitney, 408; Sarah (WillLs- 
ton) Whitney, 407, 408; Prof. 
William Dwight Whitney, 408. 

Whitney family in Northami^ton, 407- 
408; Whitney homestead, 409. 

Wilder's, 316; 355. 

Willard, Joseph, 239; Col. Josiah 
Willard, 206; 207; 212; 228; Miriam 
Willard, 228; 230; 232; 234; 236; 
237; 239; Lieut. Moses Willar 
228; 230, killed by Indian.s, 244; 
Rev. Samuel Willard, in the Deer- 
field manse, 397. 

Williams, Rev. John, the "Redeemed 
Captive," 169; 171; 172-173; 175; 
178; his story of the march of the 
Deerfield captives of 1704, 180-191; 
later life in Deei-fleld, 191-192; 193; 
190; grave of, 197; 200; 227; 311; 
356; 396; 410; Eunice (Mather) 
Williams, wife of Rev. John, 173; 
killing of on the march of the Deer- 
field captives, 182, 395; grave of. 
183; 192; 197; 410; Eleazer Wil- 
liams, son of Rev. John and Eunice, 
192; Samuel Williams, son of Rev. 
John and Eunice, 173, in captivity, 
187, 188; 190; 193; Rev. Stephen 
Williams, son of Rev. John and 
Eiuiice, 173; 180, journal of in 
captivity, 184, 185; 186; 188; 189; 
190; 191; 192, minister of Long- 
meadow, 193, army chaplain in 
three expeditions, 193; 193-194 ; 
197; Rev. Warham Williams, son 
of Rev. John and Eunice, 173, in 
captivity, 187, 188; 190; 192, minis- 
ter of Waltham (Massachusetts), 193; 
Rev. Samuel Williams, .son of War- 
ham, 193; Esther Williams, daughter 



of Rev. John and Eunice, 173, in 
captivity, 187, 188; 191, a minister's 
wife, 193; Eunice Williams, daugh- 
ter of Rev. John and Etmioe, 173, 
in captivity, 187, 188, 192, an 
Indian chieftain's wife, 193, visit of 
vrith an Indian retinue to her 
brother Stephen at Longmeadow, 
193-194, death of in her forest 
home, 194; Eleazer WillianLs, great 
grandson of this Eunice, 194, educa- 
tion of at Longmeadow, 194, claim 
of to he the "lost dauphin" of 
France, 194-196; John AViUiams, 
another great grandson of Eunice, 
194 ; Abigail (Bissel) WilUams, 
second wife of Rev. John, 192; 196; 
197; Abigail, daughter of Rev. John 
and Abigail, 196; Elijah Williams, 
son of Rev. John and Abigail, 196- 
197; Elijah Williams, son of Ehjah, 
197; John Williams, great grandson 
of Rev. John, 311; 312; Col. Israel 
Williams, 224; 246; 247; Bishop 
John Williams, 456; Rev. Roger 
Williams, 96; 110; 139. 

Williams family in Deerfield, 192-197. 

Williams River, 185; 356. 

Winchester, 144; 198; 207; 228; 245. 

Windsor, 21; first called Dorchester, 
25; 32; 33; 37; 46; named, 48; 50; 
51; 80; 82; 83; in the Pequot Wars, 
98; 133; in King Philip's War, 149; 
192; 325; 364; 430; the modern 
town, 431-432; 433; 4.34; 436; 438; 
439. 

Windsor, Vermont, 264; 266; conven- 
tions at, 267-268, 269-271, 273, 320, 
324; Vermont state established at, 
269-271; "Constitution Hall,' 269, 
273; 274; 276; 283; Vermont Assem- 
bly at, 293, 294, 299; 311; 337; 338; 
341; 356; the modern town, 386- 
387. 

Windsor Locks, 324; 364; Pine- 
meadow of old Windsor, 430. 



Index 



487 



Winooski River, 186; 348. 

Winslow, Edward, exploration of the 
Connecticut by, 15; assumed to be 
its discoverer, 16; 17; 26; Josiah 
Winslow, 143. 

Winthrop, John, governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 14; 15; 16; 17; 18; 29; 34; 
36; 40; 41; 42; 43; 46; 62; tribute 
to Thomas Hooker, 55; 60; 70; 88; 
John Winthrop, the younger, gover- 
nor of Connecticut, 29-30; 31; 32; 
36; 43; 46; 69; sketch of, 70-72; the 
"Governor's Gold Ring," 458-459. 

Winthrop family, 70. 

Witherspoon, Rev. Dr. John, president 
of Princeton College, 286. 

Wolcott, Henry, the emigrant, 431; 
432; Henry Wolcott, eldest son of 
Henry, 50; Simon Wolcott, young- 
est son of Henry, 432; Martha (Pit- 
kin) Wolcott, wife of Simon, see 
Pitkin, Martha; Roger Wolcott, son 
of Simon and Martha, 163; house 
of in South Windsor, 432, 433; 
sketch of, 432-434; Sarah (Drake) 



Wolcott, wife of Roger, 433; 434; 
Oliver Wolcott, 133. 

Wolcott family in the Windsors, 432- 
434. 

Wongunks. See Indian tribes. 

Woodsville, 378. 

Woodward, Bezaleel, 262; 263; 274; 
278; 287; 288; 289; 293; 294; 296. 

Wright, Capt. Benjamin, scout, 203; 
Sergt. Wright, 123. 

Wyllys, George, 51; Wyllys home- 
stead, 443. 



Yacht, the first American built, 1; 5. 

Yale College, beginning of, at Say- 
brook, 76; 77; " commencement " 
of, at Wethersfield, 78; 79; 119; 
200; 407; 437; 446. 

" Yorkers," 285. 



Zachary Sanford's tavern, 443. 



-./; 



H63 89 <MM 











♦ . . . • 



^« 







«5 °^ -1 



v^\i«ik.% 



o,. *.T«' ^0 



.* .,. 



>. *•"• <«^ 



•- ^^ 



•e,. A^ .*«SII^'. %>^ A^ , W/h!' ''i*. ^-t- ' - 






^^ .»'.. "^ 



> .""•.-"^^ 



0^ .•'JJ!» o, 4ir oiiJ*. 



>♦ .1'.. •*•,■ 



:. "^bv* 




0" .•':^'» o, 4w* 



V c««»» *<^^ 




•'7^-' o-^ X^^^'f**^ 



>* ... 



"if- -»" a,^ ^ ••' «^^ -4. 






*:♦ xcc" 






o^ ♦, 



>>.♦" 



>» ^-^ 
.^^, 












0^ »-^^L%'^« 



O, 'o . » * .'\ 




i^*^.'-!'*-'^. 



v^ • • • a" 






L-J" . 



/.c:^.'^°o 



'0^ 'o.'i* ^ <> •• 



o^, *•"•' aO 




V '^'^'J 






.-( 






9^. ••••• aO 



L*' 



i> . t • 1 



*^ . 










W^ 







.^40^ 




• iP-n*.. '^ 



.«^°^ 



'• J 






"»bv* 



* .-aiD.-. **,_^/ ^.^^.. t. 











i 



rvAu 



m^- 



Vi«' 



m 



i^\-ir 



m 



•\tH> 



1 



m 



m 



\\\m 



^M 






U^ V 



'A 



UlUU\ 






i^l 



If 



